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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24969331">A Whole New World</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoCoincidence/pseuds/NoCoincidence'>NoCoincidence</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mythic Ocean</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:21:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>45,881</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24969331</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoCoincidence/pseuds/NoCoincidence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The gods each have ways they feel the new world should be. But whether pandemonium or harmonious, the mortals living in their worlds all have their own stories to tell.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Resentment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I do not own Mythic Ocean. Paralune does.</p><p>Chapter published June 28 2020.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The twins tried to help the mortals survive, but over time they lost their will.</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">Cynthia</span>
</p><p>The sheets of rain ramming away at the door lightened up, now merely pounding away at it.</p><p>"Now, do you remember what I said?" she told her kids, fussing over them and making sure everything was done up just right. Hoods were up, boots were tight.</p><p>"Yes, mom," Kara muttered, crossing her arms sulkily.</p><p>Pants were tucked into their boots, good...</p><p>"We'll stay close, shout if we get knocked off our feet," Ala moaned. "Hey, quit it!" he said, batting her hand away as she checked over his head.</p><p>Good, good, goggles were fastened.</p><p>"Good. Now, hook yourselves to me," she said, standing and wiping the sweat of anxiety from her brow. The kids bunched around her backside and secured their harnesses to the hooks on her outfit. She gave them one or two tugs to make sure they were secure and, satisfied, she gave a little hum. Then, Cynthia turned to the door and breathed out nervously.</p><p>No matter how many times she did this, it never grew easier. But it had to be done. With that, she opened the door.</p><p>The moment it was unlocked, the door <em>slammed</em> inward into the house. Howling wind billowed into the house, whipping around her clothes as it sought out her flesh. Streaks of air found her hair and whipped it around her hood, found the straps keeping her and the kids together and sent them jangling. Cynthia lowered her head into the onslaught and pushed forward, dragging herself and the kids out. She took heavy, stomping steps to bury the spikes of her shoes into the ground for anchorage. Fortunately, the constant rain made the soil more than soft enough for that. With a heave of effort she pulled the door shut, struggling against the wind, and locked the numerous bolts again.</p><p>All around her, the storm howled. As far as the eye could see there were clouds, thick and gray and angry, mottled gray and lighter gray and darker gray. Gray, gray, gray, as far as the eye could see and further. Wind whipped around her, rain came pouring sideways under the powerful gales, and though it was dark, the neverending crackle-crackle of lightning gave enough light to see by... even though the endless drums of thunder shook her to her bones.</p><p>"AH!" Kara shouted behind her, and Cynthia whipped around to see what had happened. Her daughter's legs shook, but she was still attached and unharmed. Probably just lost her balance; the incredible winds that supported the island their town was built on were not reliable things. The ground constantly heaved to and fro, sometimes plummeting out from under her and sometimes rising so fast her gut sank into her feet. But over the decades she'd learned to live with it, and her children would too.</p><p>
  <em>CRA-BOOM!</em>
</p><p>A lightning bolt struck closer, blasting old man McKindle's roof off. Her kids jumped, but she just sighed and got a mouthful of freezing rain. She'd have to join the brigade to fix that, later. <em>Later.</em> Now, she had some place to be.</p><p>They passed through the dim, dismal streets of the city one plodding step at a time, always making sure to neither lean into the wind nor let it carry them, lest a sudden gust from a different direction take them off guard. The ground was slick with rain. So much rain it ran in rivulets near houses, and it stung as the wind carried it into her goggles, seeping around the seal and into her eyes. The ever-present rumble and glow of thunder and lightning were their only conversation partners.</p><p>Cynthia made her way towards the town square, dogged by the storm all the while. A few others rushed on the streets alongside her, but there was no time to make chit-chat. She had to get to the farmer's market and get her rations.</p><p>The town square was a little bowl in the middle of the floating island they called home, with channels carved into the stone to carry off rainwater, and these channels frothed raging white there was so much water pouring through them. The local 'stalls' were, in fact, just intricately carved stone arches where the few farmers they had could give out their wares. The homeless - those whose houses had been completely torn away by the maelstrom around them - huddled around the stalls for what paltry shelter they could find. Several time Cynthia had entertained letting them into her own house, but she never offered. She and the kids had enough problems of their own.</p><p>She checked the kids were still securely attached, and came to the first stall. The old lady behind it didn't say anything; she just held out a bony hand for Cynthia's ration token, which she handed over. Carefully, to keep the winds from blowing it away. The stallkeeper inspected the stone carefully with a milky eye, then nodded and handed over a bag of electric fungus, named for the way lightning seemed to provide the edible mushrooms energy whenever it came crackling by.</p><p>Cynthia zipped up the bag and gave it to Kara to carry. Her little girl wrapped her hands around the burlap sack tightly, and hid her hands in the pockets that doubled as handholds to secure it against the wind.</p><p>
  <em>CRA-BOOM!</em>
</p><p>Another bolt came streaking down, but miraculously, instead of seeking out something on their island to blast, it veered away back into the sky as if deflected by an invisible shield. And... had the wind and rain died down just a touch? There was even more light peeking through the raging stormclouds, enough to actually cast <em>shadows. </em>Everyone walking around the market paused, turning their heads up high.</p><p>"Whoa!" Ala said, blinking his little eyes behind his goggles. "Mommy, what's going on?"</p><p>"I'm not sure, sweetie," she said, cautiously optimistic. She led the kids away from the stall, looking back and forth for anything out of place.</p><p>She heard something. Hushed whispering, behind a stall. She was going to dismiss it as some of the homeless muttering to each other, but something caught her <em>eye,</em> too. A toasty, orange glow, like the weak fires she could sometimes get going indoors. "Kids, stay behind me," she said, pushing them behind her with an outstretched hand. Bending her knees, she slowly approached the orange glow.</p><p>The whispers became clearer. " - c'mon, work, work. Why isn't it working?" A girl's voice.</p><p>"It's gotta work, it did this in the first place! This is so stupid. <em>Work!</em>" A boy's voice.</p><p>"Try harder."</p><p>"I <em>am,</em> Ketri!"</p><p>"C'mon, clouds, go away, go away..."</p><p>"Excuse me?" Cynthia said, peering around the corner.</p><p>They were... children. Not human like her, nor any other race she'd ever seen. They were vaguely humanoid, but their skin was smooth, unnaturally so, and devoid of all hair. One's was a pale purple-ish blue, and the other a faded red. There were strange white markings along their eyes and arms, along with metal circlets around their heads, and the only clothes they had were long vests hanging from their shoulders. The only hair either of them had were small designs on the top of their heads; a strange box-like cut for the red one, and a ponytail for the purple one. Their ears were flat and floppy, almost like an animal's, and from either side of their chins short tendrils hung limply. Despite their meager clothing, they didn't look at all disturbed by the ongoing storm that had been raging full force mere moments ago.</p><p>They jumped at her voice and the orange glow between them - she couldn't get a good look - vanished. They leapt to their feet and glared at her. "Hey!" the purple girl snarled, glaring up at her and clenching her fists. "What's the big idea, sneaking up on us like that?!" The rain picked up again, and the wind howled with renewed vigor.</p><p>Cynthia startled at the venom in her voice. "I'm sorry, I just - I thought I heard something, and I came to check on you."</p><p>She rolled her eyes. "Well, that's great and all, but you should've still let us know."</p><p>"Yeah," the boy - her brother? - said. "What kind of person just sneaks up on people they don't know?"</p><p>She held up her hands. "I'm sorry, I really am. I wasn't thinking." She inspected them a moment longer. "Are... you two alright? You're barely wearing anything, you must be soaked."</p><p>"We don't need your help!" the boy shouted, raising a fist at her despite being half her height. "We don't need anyone's help! We're the - " He cut himself off and, with wide eyes, trailed off. "The, uh, the..." He deflated, looked up at the whirling clouds, and dropped his eyes to the ground. "We don't need anyone," he finished lamley.</p><p>"Alright, I understand," she said. "I'm sorry, what are your names? I should have asked that first." <em>But you were shouting at me,</em> was what she didn't dare say. "I'm Cynthia."</p><p>"Right," the boy said. "I'm Esti. This is my sister, Ketri."</p><p>"I've never seen you two around," she said. "Did you come sailing in? All by yourselves?"</p><p>The last three words were the wrong thing to say; the kids didn't say anything but she could've sworn she saw lightning crackle in their eyes, lightning that wasn't being reflected from the storm outside. "We're new in town," Ketri said through clenched teeth.</p><p>"It's nice to meet you. Kids, come out, say hi to Ketri and Esti," she said, urging Kara and Ala in front of her.</p><p>"Hey, I'm Kara."</p><p>"Um, hi, I'm Ala."</p><p>"Yeah, hey," Esti muttered.</p><p>"Whatever," was all Ketri said.</p><p>As one, their eyes went back to the storm. Rain whipped against the two's skin.</p><p>"Are you sure you're alright? How are you not freezing in this storm?"</p><p>They pursed their lips "It's alright. We're used to it," Ketri said.</p><p>"Yeah. Just leave us alone," Esti said, sullenly crossing his arms. A bolt of lightning flashed behind them, casting the children in shadow. "We'll be fine on our own, we always have been."</p><p>Cynthia frowned, thinking. Kids were kids, and sometimes kids could get snappy. But there was no way she could just let them stand out here, soaking in the icy rain and freezing in the chilling winds, no matter how ill-tempered they were. Maybe it <em>was</em> time she opened her house to someone. They were all trying to survive together, weren't they. "Maybe you're fine, but couldn't you be better than fine? If you want, I can let you stay with me and my kids for a while, just until you find some place for your own."</p><p>Ketri crossed her arms. "Oh, yeah?" she snarked. "And what's the catch?"</p><p>"Um, Ketri, I think we should do it," Esti said. "We've been trying to... ya know. Maybe it'd be easier with a roof over our heads."</p><p>She sighed and relaxed. "<em>Fine.</em>" Ketri wagged a finger up at Cynthia. "But if you try anything funny, you're gonna be sorry!" She closed her eyes and, smirking, placed her hands on her hips sassily. "We have powers, you know. <em>R</em><em>eal</em> strong ones. One wrong move and we'll blast you into next week!"</p><p>Cynthia smiled. Children could have such imaginations. "I'll keep it in mind." She looked around the back of the stall. "Hmm, did you two lose something? I know I saw something glowing over here before I came over; did you lose a torch?"</p><p>Ketri and Esti shared a glance. "Don't worry about it," Esti said.</p><p>Cynthia shrugged. "Alright. Can you follow along with us? I still need to finish up my shopping."</p><p>Esti sighed. "Yeah, whatever."</p><p>The two strange kids fell into line behind her, Kara, and Ala. She got a few strange looks as she continued about her business, buying the few things she had a ration token for. Ketri and Esti were quiet on the way back home, as were her kids, which was just as well. The storm, despite having quieted down for a moment, was roaring as furiously as ever now. She had to struggle against the weather every step of the way as they got a bag of glowberries and a skin of goat's milk, then back home. But while Kara and Ala struggled as much as her, aided only by the leather straps keeping them leashed to her, Ketri and Esti were... completely unphased. Gusts of wind, sheets of rain, even a brief hailstorm that saw her seeking shelter, none of it seemed to bother them in the least.</p><p>Not even their clothes were wet.</p><p><em>What did I just agree to take into my house? With my kids?</em> she wondered. She'd laughed it off when Ketri said she had powers, but already Cynthia found herself wondering.</p><p>Eventually, they made it back home, stumbling through the front door as the winds blew it open.</p><p>"Esti, can you shut the door?"</p><p>"Ugh, <em>fine,</em>" he muttered. While Cynthia was busy undoing all the protective gear on her and her kids, Esti walked over to the door and - as though winds strong enough to bowl over a grown man weren't pushing against him - closed it and bolted the locks.</p><p>"Whoa!" Kara said, stars in her eyes. "You must be super strong!"</p><p>Esti beamed and placed a hand to his chest. "Heh, yeah, I am!"</p><p>Ketri rolled her eyes. "Hmph, well, duh. Told you you have powers." Her fists tightened and she directed a glare at Cynthia. She suddenly felt afraid for her life. "But you didn't <em>believe</em> us, did you? Thought it was some stupid <em>kid</em> make-believe thing!"</p><p>"Okay, on that note!" she said, trying to change the subject. "I need to go help the brigade with rebuilding. Kara, Ala, can you put the food away? Ketri, Esti, make yourselves at home. When I get back tonight, I'll find you two some place to sleep."</p><p>"Yes, Mom!"</p><p>"Okay, Mommy!"</p><p>"Sure, whatever."</p><p>"Yeah, go, uh, rebuild the stuff the storm keeps destroying. Eheh," Esti said, with a nervous laugh.</p><p>She didn't give much thought to it, and after making sure she was well equipped for the storm, she left the house again.</p>
<hr/><p>It was night time, now. It was always dark, but now it was downright abyssal. She'd heard stories from sailers - people who braved the storm on false wings to travel from island to island - that somewhere, far above, was a vast field of cloudless sky filled with 'stars', but she'd never seen them. She wondered if they were out in force right now.</p><p>The day had, as always, been filled with hard work. The brigade had had to rebuild seven lightning-struck houses just today, though seeing the homeless couple's faces light up when they could have a roof over their heads again made it worth it. Today had been lucky; nothing had collapsed the underground tunnels where the farmers toiled, and the rain collectors had picked up a lot of water. There was barely any hail damage, either.</p><p>With an exhausted burn to her muscles, Cynthia stumbled home. Fortunately, the winds were relatively weak at the moment, and she wasn't tossed back and forth like a toy on her way back. Her house came into view, so she grabbed the doorknob and - when the wind briefly blew away from the door, not towards - she opened it and slipped inside quietly.</p><p>Inside was dark too; which was good, it was past Kara and Ala's bedtimes and they knew how to put themselves to bed when she was out working late. She shut the door quietly, so as not to wake them up, and -</p><p>She heard something. She saw something.</p><p>Past the living room was the kitchen, and there was a flickering, pulsing orange glow coming from there.</p><p>"What if we focus on a clear sky?" came Esti's hushed voice.</p><p>"What do you mean 'focus' on a clear sky?" hissed Ketri.</p><p>"You know, picture it in your head or something."</p><p>"We tried that before, it didn't work!"</p><p>"Well we weren't trying hard enough, then!"</p><p>Cynthia crept forward slowly, tip-toeing her way to the kitchen. She grasped the doorframe - made, like everything on their island, from hastily carved stone - and poked her head around.</p><p>Ketri and Esti sat on the floor facing each other. Between the two of them was... <em>something.</em> It was a gigantic orb of light, like a slowly roiling ball of fire. Pink and red light streamed off its surface, and just looking at it made her feel itchy, like the static in the air after a lightning strike. The two children had their hands on the orb, and their eyes were closed, deep in concentration.</p><p>
  <em>CRA-BOOM!</em>
</p><p>"Damn it!" Esti shouted, opening his eyes. Then he locked eyes with Cynthia.</p><p>"I - "</p><p>"Oh shoot!" Esti said, pulling his hands off the orb. Ketri opened her eyes and did the same. Just like that the mystical sphere vanished, collapsing in on itself until it was gone. "New lady, you're back. We, uh." He traded looks with Ketri and rubbed the back of his head nervously. "We didn't hear you."</p><p>"I didn't mean to pry," she said hastily, heart pounding. Ketri said they had powers. She'd been telling the truth. What <em>was </em>that giant thing?</p><p>"It's nothing, okay?" Ketri said, looking up at Cynthia angrily. "Just forget about it!"</p><p>"I can't just forget what I saw," she said. "Ketri, Esti, I need to know if whatever... <em>that</em> was, is going to put Kara and Ala in danger."</p><p>Esti's eyes widened as if challenged. "Oh, so you think we're gonna go zapping your kids now, is that it?! Nobody ever trusts us!"</p><p>"Yeah! Just because you see some sparkling lights you think you're in danger?! You're in more danger every second because of the storm than from us!" Ketri's glare softened and she glanced at the floor. "The storm that... that we just can't..."</p><p>Esti calmed down too, and held his sister's hand. "It's okay, Ketri. We're trying." He didn't sound like he believed his own words.</p><p>Cynthia frowned. "Ketri, Esti." She got down on one knee, putting her on their level. "If you don't mind, do you want to tell me what you were doing with that... whatever it was?"</p><p>They sighed. "You know how we have powers," Esti said. "I mean, we can do stuff like, um." He looked around, and his eyes settled on a jar of glowberry jam. Esti extended a hand towards it, and Cynthia startled as a bright purple aura lit up around both his hand and the jar. As if possessed by a spirit, it floated over to his grasp, where the glow then faded. "We can move stuff with our minds, or shoot lightning from our hands, or make barriers. Stuff like that."</p><p>"That light ball was something, um, given to us by a friend. It made our powers a lot stronger, but..." Ketri scuffed the ground miserably. "It... doesn't always do what we want. We're trying to make this storm stop, make the world something more... normal, ya know?" Cynthia stared at her curiously, and Ketri sighed. "No, you don't know. It's been like this your whole life," she said morosely.</p><p>"It doesn't matter anyway," Esti muttered, crossing his arms. "The stupid thing doesn't do what we tell it to. All we can do is sort of make the storm a bit calmer for a bit, and only for one stinkin' island at a time." He hung his head. "Why do we even bother?"</p><p>Outside, thunder rolled.</p><p>"Oh, wow," Cynthia said, trying to process it. "Thank you, you two, for trusting me with this. And I can trust you won't try to do anything to my kids? Even on accident?"</p><p>They sighed. "We promise," they said in perfect unison. Maybe they were twins.</p><p>Cynthia nodded, feeling numb. Esti had just moved something with his mind, but she did what she did every time the storm threw a new calamity at their little island; bundled up the shock and vowed to deal with it later. Many other islands' denizens didn't keep their heads on straight, and they all ended up being destroyed by the weather with only those few who sailed away to tell their tale.</p><p>"Alright. Then with that, I think it's time for bed. You can work with your, um." She waved a hand. "Fire light ball in the morning after you get some rest."</p><p>"Oh, we don't really need to slee - oof!" Esti was cut off when Ketri elbowed him.</p><p>"That sounds great!" Ketri said with an overly sweet smile. "We'll just find a spot on the floor."</p><p>Spots on the floor were all <em>anyone</em> had. "Alright, sounds good. There's some fern mats in the closet you can use to soften it up." She smiled. "I'll see you two in the morning for breakfast."</p><p>Hopefully, after this heart to heart, the twins would be a little less... prickly. Maybe she could do some good for them.</p>
<hr/><p>"MOOOOOM, KETRI'S BEING MEAN TO ME!"</p><p><em>It hasn't even been a day.</em> Cynthia whirled around at Ala's cry and spotted the darker-colored twin holding a bowl of porridge in her hands, stretching up high to keep it out of Ala's reach.</p><p>"Ketri!" she scolded, turning away from her stone oven. "Don't take Ala's food, there's barely enough to go around anyway."</p><p>She rolled her eyes petulantly. "Ugh, fine." She let go of the bowl, letting it drop to the ground. Thankfully, before it could shatter on the floor, Ala grabbed it. Sniffling, he hurried away into the corner to begin tearfully eating. "Wasn't even hungry, anyway," she said, sulkily.</p><p>Esti shared a look with his twin, then looked up at Cynthia. "We're gonna go work on the... ya know." Without waiting for a response, the twins left for another room in the house. Soon there was an orange glow coming from there, and the raging storm outside quieted just a touch.</p><p>With them gone, Cynthia hurried over to Ala and brushed his tears off his face. "There there, shh, she didn't mean it," she whispered, hugging him close and consoling him. Internally, she seethed. She was going to have to give Ketri a <em>stern</em> talking to about taking other people's things, then leave for work. There was always more to do, always more houses that needed fixing. Once Ala was calmed down, and he and Kara were ready to begin their work around the house, she ventured to find where Ketri and Esti had escaped to.</p><p>She'd explain to them why what they did was wrong, and then be on her way.</p><p>Cynthia found the twins huddled by the latrine - a river of rainwater washed everything away quickly - with their glowing magic orb between them. Their eyes were closed and they were dead to the world as they muttered quietly to themselves. Now that she wasn't in the heat of the moment, Cynthia took a moment to inspect the orb more closely. Like before, it took the form of an enormous ball of fire, roiling in slow motion. But where she'd at first thought power was flowing<em> from </em>it, power was instead condensing <em>into</em> it; pink streams of light formed in midair and collapsed inward to the orb, turning orange and merging with its surface at some point.</p><p>The twins twitched and murmured, as if having a nightmare. The ground beneath Cynthia <em>lurched</em> as a sudden updraft heaved the entire island. "Whoa!" she said, startled as she lost her balance. She leaned against the wall to keep from falling over.</p><p>That was enough to get their attention. They leaped away from the glowing orb as if its flame suddenly burned them. Without dismissing it, the twins turned to her. "What's the big idea?!" Esti demanded. "We were busy!"</p><p>"I wanted to talk with Ketri about what happened back there," she said. <em>How not to make them feel attacked?</em> "I wanted to get her side of the story, too."</p><p>Ketri rolled her eyes. "What's there to talk about? Ala wasn't even eating his food until I took it." Her eyes darkened and her face grew stormy. "He didn't want it until <em>I</em> had it, he just wanted to take things from <em>me!</em>"</p><p>"That doesn't matter," she gently chided. "He would have become hungry eventually, and he would have eaten it then. It was his food, and he can eat it when he wants."</p><p>"Oh, so you're just gonna ignore what we said and give your little speech anyway?!" Esti shouted, raising a fist. "That's just what everyone always does!"</p><p><em>CRA-BOOM!</em> That lightning strike was... awfully close by.</p><p>"It doesn't matter what everyone else does, you had no right - "</p><p>"We have <em>every</em> right!" he insisted. A dangerous light flashed in the twins' eyes, and the massive sphere of light between them pulsed in response to his shout. "We keep doing so much for all of you, we keep trying so hard, but we don't get <em>anything</em> for it!"</p><p>"And it doesn't even work," Ketri groused. "Nobody wants to help us, everyone just wants to keep their heads down keep going on with their <em>stupid</em> lives, like this <em>stupid</em> storm was supposed to happen!" Supposed to happen? What did she mean by -</p><p>
  <strong> <em>KRACKA-BOOM!</em> </strong>
</p><p>Cynthia shrieked as another bolt of lightning struck, this time spearing through her ceiling and blasting through the stone floor. Light and sound flooded her senses, rendering her blind and deaf to the world save for the smell of ozone.</p><p>She floundered on the ground, gasping for breath. The kids, where were the kids? Were they alright? The blotches cleared out of her vision and she saw the twins standing in front of their orb, staring down at her in horror while mouthing... something.</p><p>"... we're..." she faintly heard Esti say.</p><p>"... keep... anything we do... happening!" Ketri cried, hiding her face in her hands.</p><p>The orb pulsed more angrily behind them. The ringing in her ears faded, but her arms still didn't cooperate beyond letting her flop uselessly on the ground.</p><p>" - we're supposed to be the creators but we keep screwing it up!" Ketri sobbed. "We keep s-screwing everything up, a-and it shouldn't have been us, it... it - "</p><p>" - why did it even make people in this world?" Esti accused. "Why are any of you here?! It'd be fine if the world was just a storm but why did it make people live in it? Did it just want us to see you getting hurt?! Is this some kind of sick joke?! Why would the Historian <em>do this to us?!</em>"</p><p>" - they were right to banish us, we couldn't do things right then and - and - and we can't do things right now, what would they say if they saw us now?" Ketri lifted her head. The winds whipping through her now-roofless house picked up her tears and flung them away. In the open sky, Cynthia saw lightning criss-crossing the clouds, more than she'd ever seen in her life, as though it was a wool shirt woven entirely out of light.</p><p>" - we can't even make an <em>empty</em> world right, we can't even make a <em>dead</em> world right! We can't even screw things up right! Everything we touch just - "</p><p>The orb pulsed one final time.</p><p>Cynthia screamed as a great, shearing blade of wind cut through the ground all around her, turning the island into rubble as though all its tons of stone were no more than warm butter. She flailed around as she began to fall. Twisting onto her back, screaming the kids' names, the last thing she saw were the twins hovering in place, looking down at her in horror, as she fell and fell and fell...</p><p>... into the endless, thunderous sky.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>The storm always took everything away in the end.</strong>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please do leave a comment, let me know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Compassion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I do not own Mythic Ocean. Paralune does.</p><p>Chapter published July 18 2020.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>"What if... everyone had powers?"</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">Jarir</span>
</p><p>"Oh, thank the Twins," he said, reaching out to grab the jar. "You're a life saver, Amar."</p><p>"Hey, any time, bud!" they said with a grin on their fanged, furry face. The god of revelry wasn't quite as made for moving around on land as for swimming through water, but they <em>were</em> still a god, and made do. Plus, Amar was tall; they could easily lay on their belly, raise their head, and still by eye to eye with Jarir himself. "If ya don't mind, I'm gonna head on over to the other camps. Unless you need anything else?" they asked, tilting their head and opening all three eyes wide.</p><p>Jarir bowed to his once-teacher. "No, you've been a huge help. This..." He hefted the jar. "This will save a great many lives."</p><p>"Sounds good." Amar paused, then tilted their head. "Jarir, just want to say this before I forget. I'm really proud of you, ya know? You've come a long way."</p><p>He shifted uncomfortably. "Thank you, sir. I'll see you around."</p><p>Amar pointed one of their purple-tinted paws at him. "Will do, bud!" Amar stood up straight, tail ramrod stiff, and fell backwards into a suddenly-opened portal that snapped shut once they were in; even the other gods had each been granted an ability in the Empowerment, generations ago, and Amar's was the ability to open portals.</p><p>Well, they were gone. Time to get to work.</p><p>The large white tent Jarir'd met Amar in was filled with the sick and afflicted, all victims of the weapons the dread goddess Alethea and her followers employed with reckless abandon. The air was filled with the sounds of groaning, coughing, and of people voiding their stomachs - from either end - as the invisible sickness wracked their bodies inside and out. Many other healers were walking around, tending to the wounded as best they could with powers and medicine alike.</p><p>It was time for him to get back to them. Jarir braced himself, raised the jug to his lips, tilted his head back, and <em>drank.</em></p><p>For the briefest of moments it tasted like tart blueberries, and then it tasted like medicine. Cold and bitter, it slid down his throat, coiled around his gut, and sent surging warmth through his body even as he suppressed the urge to retch. As drop after drop was absorbed by his body, he felt his power replenishing. The warmth turned hot, turned excitable, until he was filled with enough energy to bounce off the walls. Only when he'd drank everything, leaving none for others, was he ready to return to his job.</p><p>After all, his power was among the most valuable for treating these poor people.</p><p>Jarir went over to the closest patient, a fox woman with her golden fur falling out in clumps. Kneeling over her, he held his hands out and focused on his Twins-given power. A pale green glow, so transparent as to be nearly just a shimmer in the air, streamed from his hands and into her. He felt for her damaged flesh, for the places where the essence of her being had been twisted out of shape, and began to push it back into what it should have been. She sighed in her sleep and her breathing evened out as Jarir finished his work and stood with a heave. He wasn't <em>tired</em> per se, but the use of his power had made some of the warmth Amar's elixir had given him turn to a bone-deep chill.</p><p>She'd need more medical attention, but at least she wouldn't be deteriorating any more. She'd make it.</p><p>But there were <em>plenty</em> more who needed his help.</p><p>It was horrible work. The varying stages of the sickness were something out of a nightmare, and often it wasn't just the illness itself but also the burns and scarring the rebellion's weapons inflicted directly, too. It was all so horrific, yet even worse than that was the fact that Jarir was used to it, that he and the other medics had all seen this so many times his stomach barely even churned anymore. Why was this happening? Why was it still going on, even after all these years?</p><p>He walked from stretcher to stretcher, worn shoes sinking into the scorching desert sand. He coordinated with the other healers, directing his power to specific parts of their patients' bodies as they performed surgery with grabbers and scissors and cloths - all reused and stained, but made safe through Katri's power. They asked for tools, they got tools. He asked for them to hold a patient still as they convulsed, they did. Beyond that there was simply nothing to say; what were they going to do, talk about the weather?</p><p>The work continued as the sun traced its path along the sky, casting the desert in all the shades of gold and bronze. Portal-wielders constantly showed up from the front lines, carrying the wounded and sick on their shoulders. Portal-wielders who would themselves soon fall ill from having been exposed to Alethea's weapons. There were always more people to treat, always more poisoning to take the warmth from his gut and replace it with ice.</p><p>The day went on and, inevitably, his thoughts wandered. He thought back to his home, a tiny village all the way out by the Crashing Falls oasis. Last he'd heard, the rebellion's forces had come across it, but that was all he knew. Jarir feared the worst; his home was poor and out of the way. Few there had combat-oriented powers, fewer still had any formal training at all; he was the only one fortunate enough to attend the great god Amar's academy. If he ever returned, what would he find? The buildings reduced to sandstone rubble by nuclear weapons? The trees and grasses devoured by great, crimson-winged insects? He didn't know, and that was the worst part.</p><p>... when would he get to return, if ever? This war had been raging for... years. Despite the vast armies of people trained to fling flame and summon slicing tornadoes, despite the Twins themselves storming the frontlines, it'd been going on for so long. How much longer could this war go? A traitorous part of him wondered if the Twins shouldn't just surrender, give in to Alethea's terms before too much damage was done.</p><p>He was drawn from his daydreaming by his patient groaning, and vomiting up blood and... other things he'd rather not think about.</p><p>... there was already <em>so</em> much damage being done. Even just being near the rebellion's weapons when they fired was terrible beyond words.</p><p>Jarir shook his head, and took a moment to wipe his brow. Despite the ever-encroaching cold that came from overusing his powers, his hand came away with a thick coating of sweat on it. These weren't good thoughts to be having. All he could do was do his job as best he could, and save as many people as he could. And for those he couldn't... he could make them as comfortable as possible.</p>
<hr/><p>"MOTHS!" came the cry.</p><p>Jarir snorted awake. He'd fallen asleep standing up, catching what few minutes of shuteye he could. The nausea and weariness that came with the lack of sleep vanished like a mirage when his brain processed what'd been said.</p><p>Moths. The chosen army of Lutra, God of Hunger, who had sided with Alethea in her rebellion. Their vast numbers formed the backbone of the rebel army, and worse, their ability to fly even through the vacuum of space meant they could attack anywhere, at any time. They moved fast and struck hard, leaving entire oases devoid of greenery in mere hours. He'd heard of moth attacks, but it was always someone else, always somewhere else.</p><p>Today, here was 'somewhere else'. Today, he was 'someone else'.</p><p>Everyone broke into a panic, trying to figure out what to do. Some of the walking wounded startled awake with elemental power crackling in their hands. They ran out of the massive tent, looking to join the fight. Medics leaped for what few supplies they still had and tried to bury them in sand, hide them from the approaching moths. Jarir's first, panicked thought wasn't even in words, just a vague, general sense of how <em>he had to get the injured out.</em></p><p>He'd only made half a step towards the nearest cot before he froze. Get them out? Get them out <em>where?! </em>They were in an undisclosed location out in the middle of nowhere, where would they move the patients? Out into the middle of the <em>desert?</em></p><p>Wait, the watch. He remembered the watchman had a speed power, maybe if Jarir got quick, he could get him to spirit the sick away to safety.</p><p>Jarir turned around and ran for the nearest flap. Pushing it open, he emerged into the blazing afternoon sun.</p><p>All around him, desert dunes stretched in all directions,scintillating as the minuscule sand grains reflected the sun's light in every direction. From his back came the cool breeze from the oasis they were set up next to. He chances a look up at the clear blue sky; there wasn't a cloud to be seen, but off in the distance, he could see it. Far above, so far up he had to crane his neck all the way back, was something like an eyelash stuck in the sky; small and black and curved. But even as he watched, the leading end of the 'eyelash' grew and turned as the swarm of giant moths spiraled down towards them.</p><p>"Where's the scout?!" he shouted to one of the many nurses scurrying around. She lifted a feathery arm and pointed at someone. Jarir followed her finger to find the man in question... finishing a conversation with another doctor before turning into a blur of tossed sand that disappeared over the nearest dune in seconds. "No!" he shouted, reaching out a hand in vain. They were gone.</p><p>Well, he couldn't give up! The moths were still some time out, he had to think of something! Jarir rounded back on the nurse, a harpy woman, and spoke frantically. "We've got to find a way to hide the patients," he said desperately, wracking his brain for thoughts.</p><p>She had an idea first. "What if we bury them underground? Does anyone have an earth-shifting power?"</p><p>"We're all healers, of course not! The only ones who would..." His eyes lit up. "The injured. One of them must have the right power, one who's well enough to use it. Split up! Spread the idea!"</p><p>"Right!" she said, giving a hurried flap of her wings as they took off in two opposite directions.</p><p>Jarir scuttled about as quick as he could, shouting for someone, anyone, with earth powers. He got a few takers, but they'd need more than one or two naga with broken arms to successfully hide every single one of the recovering patients. Luckily, as he ran around, he saw other healers doing the same, some with increasingly large followings behind them just like he did. They reconvened inside the tent, closing the flaps behind them to hide the ever-approaching swarm of moths.</p><p>"Alright, everyone who can use their earth powers, step up!" he shouted, taking a place in front of the crowd. About two dozen people stepped forward. "We gotta hide all the people still recovering, and only place to do that is underground! Put them under, enough air to last a while, but make sure it has a, uh, uh... " <em>Oh no, no, don't lose your train of thought now, of all times!</em> " - solid wall around it," he said with accompanying hand gestures, recovering. "We don't want sand pouring in on them." When they didn't move it, he snapped a hasty, "Move it!" that got them raising their hands and shrouding their fingers in flickering, unsteady earthy light.</p><p>He hated the idea of making them use their powers while still recovering. If he had it his way, none of them would be so much as lifting a boulder for the next month. But it had to be done; they could be treated for overexertion later, but if the moths killed all the patients still laying insensate on their beds, there was no coming back from that.</p><p>Jarir stumbled as the ground beneath him suddenly caved downward, and he had to run out of the area of effect as the warriors created an enormous sinkhole. He joined his various fellow medics and nurses in making sure the beds and cots were gently lowered instead of being allowed to simply drop - patient and all - into the hole. Once done, they just had to cover them all back up -</p><p>A shrill whistle filled the air. And then -</p><p>
  <em> <strong>BOOM!</strong> </em>
</p><p>The world turned pink.</p><p>The next thing Jarir knew he was laying on the ground, spitting sand. His sunhat was nowhere to be found, leaving the sun to beat down on his head. His vision wasn't... <em>blurred</em> exactly, but it wobbled back and forth too fast for him to make out anything beyond a scene of turmoil and chaos, with people desperately flinging their powers against towering blurs of shadow and flame. Jarir sputtered, another mouthful of sand pouring from his lips, and pushed himself up on his hands and knees. His eyesight stabilized enough that he could hazard a look around.</p><p>The moths had descended, swooping down to attack and rising back into the sky before anyone could get a good hit on them. He saw one of them cleave a dryad in half with its serrated insect legs. Another hovered in midair, a struggling young woman in its grip, and took off into the sky. It quickly reached a height that would be too high for her to survive a drop from. Many of them hadn't even joined in the fight, instead descending upon the oasis itself to devour the trees, leaves, grass, flowers, fruit, everything green and growing with terrifying speed. Jarir watched a dozen moths clinging to a tree bear it down with its weight, but it was consumed so fast that it was all eaten before it even hit the ground. The tent was gone, torn to shreds, and he could see several moths in the half-made hole in the ground with the injured, committing butchery.</p><p>He got to his feet, stumbling, and a moth touched down in front of him. Jarir took a step back and, gawking, turned his head up to face the creature.</p><p>It was... massive. It stood at twice his height, with a sextet of sky blue eyes that stared down at him in cold blood. A ring of dark gray fur surrounded its head, and the six furry antennae, arranged around its head like a crown, waved back and forth like it was sniffing him. Its six legs were folded beneath its body and its wings, the color of dried blood, were fully extended. Streaks of black ran along them, like teardrops of oil.</p><p>Jarir tossed a clump of sand into its face.</p><p>The sand just bounced off its compound eyes with the light pattering of hail on stone, and the moth did not falter in the slightest.</p><p>It raised one of its serrated forelegs and in that moment, he knew he was going to die.</p><p>"Hey guys, what's going - ACK!" Amar said, emerging from a portal and immediately going wide eyed. They tripped on their legs and stumbled backwards. The last thing Jarir saw of the god was their black-ringed tail vanishing into their own closing portal.</p><p>That was enough of a distraction for him to scramble away and <em>run.</em> There was no way he could fight a moth. Stronger people than him, with more combat-oriented powers, had died trying to be a hero and fight off a moth single-handedly. His shoes sunk into the sand as he ran, every step an uphill battle, and then the moth recovered and rounded upon him.</p><p>In the blink of an eye and with a flap of its wings it caught up to him, and a force like a hurricane slammed into his back, throwing him forward. Jarir struggled to get up, only to scream in pain as the moth impaled him through the back, pinning him to the ground. But his scream fizzled out into a mute groan as all the air was instantly pushed from his body as the insect's jagged limb tore up his flesh, leaving him flopping like a beached fish.</p><p>
  <em>Help me...</em>
</p><p>As if summoned by the thought, portals opened up all around the battlefield, and from them streamed dozens of soldiers each. They all unleashed their powers on the nearest moths; the one impaling him was barraged by icicles, fireballs, bolts of lightning, miniature tornadoes of glass, and more, with enough force to knock it off.</p><p>As it did, the spiked leg in him was wrenched out and his vision flashed red with pain as it did. <em>Made it... worse. I need... I need -</em></p><p>"Hang on there, bud, I got ya," came a familiar voice. Oh-so-gently, Jarir was lifted by four furry arms, and carried through a portal. The heat of the desert instantly vanished, replaced by the cool dampness of some hidden underground chamber. He shivered at the sudden cold, but how much of that was blood loss? He could... he could feel.</p><p>"Here, she's got ya," Amar said, and sure enough Jarir felt the familiar burning heat of someone healing his wounds engulf his body. "Man, that gave me a fright. Came through to check up, walked right into a moth attack!" Jarir turned his head over on... on whatever he was laying on, and focused his vision on Amar. "You're lucky, though. There were a bunch of portal-users where I'd just come out of, didn't take long at all to get folks out where you were."</p><p>"Amar..." he croaked, unable to even turn his head to look at who was healing him. "... the... injured."</p><p>The otter's face softened. "Yeah, it's, uh, not a good thing to be out there, friend." They brought their upper pair of arms together nervously. "Look, I'll head back in a little bit, help look for survivors, but right now it's <em>real</em> hot out there, ya know?" They nodded solemnly. "We gotta wait till the moths are chased off, right? No sense running in until then. Besides." They winked their third, center eye. "You were the one lookin' after them, right? I'm sure they'll be fine."</p><p>"But - "</p><p>"Hey, just take it easy, friend, alright? You don't gotta shoulder this whole thing yourself. We'll look after ya as long as we need."</p><p>Jarir hesitated, then nodded. Teacher's orders. The world, the war, would go on without him.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">Years Later</span>
</p><p>Time passed. The war was raged and the world was ravaged, but in time the rebellion was put down.</p><p>Jarir found himself discharged and, while he still couldn't walk for very long before being winded and needing to sit down, he'd otherwise made a full recovery. More than many could say. At least he was well enough to watch the imminent Judgement.</p><p>He stood outside the Palace of the Twins, among the throng of jeering, riotous civilians. An elf held up a sign demanding for Alethea's execution. A minotaur beside him bellowed for the dismantling of all technology related to the defeated and disgraced goddess. Further along, effigies of both her and Lutra burned, sending up pillars of smoke into the cloud-laden sky. Jarir stared up at the palace, simmering with anger that reached his brow and made him sweat, despite the popsicle he was eating. Would he get to see her? Would he get to see the goddess who'd brought all this crashing down around them, whose selfishness and obsession had unscrewed the world? The Palace of the Twins was massive, after all, and towered far above everything else around him.</p><p>Near the top, if he squinted, he could see the open tower where the Twins often held court with the mortals. Sunlight streamed through the open gaps between pillars, and if he squinted especially hard, he could see a figure within, bound with chains, looking as though they wore a flowing gown; Alethea herself, goddess of science and discovery.</p><p>Jarir seethed. He only wished that Lutra were there, too, but when it was clear the rebellion's fate was sealed, the moths had all disappeared back into the stars. He would have to settle himself for witnessing the ringleader's judgement.</p><p>The clouds rumbled, and he smiled cruelly, joining in the rising jeers. It seemed he wouldn't have to wait long.</p><p>"ALETHEA!" the Twins' voices bellowed from above. The sky split, revealing Ketri and Esti standing upon the clouds, the sun shining behind them, as tall as the mountains themselves. In the distance, lightning struck the desert with accompanying rolls of thunder. The twin gods' eyes burned pure white with power as they gazed down upon the world, their faces set into expressionless masks. "We wish you had not tried to fight us like this."</p><p>"You were our friend, our mentor!" Esti said, clenching his fists.</p><p>"We looked up to you," Ketri finished, placing her hands on her chest.</p><p>"But it is all over now," they said together. "You have caused so much damage."</p><p>They all screamed louder, baying for blood.</p><p>"You have killed so many people, and your weapons have disfigured so many more."</p><p>"YEAH!" Jarir shouted, his blood boiling, his mind's eye flashing with the horrors he had seen in the war.</p><p>"Though your forces are defeated now, who is to say you won't try this again?"</p><p>In the spire, Alethea raised a hand to her face, as if the visage of the Twins was too intense for her to bear.</p><p>"We will show you the same mercy that you refused the people of this world, and give you your life. In place, we strip you of your godhood," Ketri said, her hands glowing orange.</p><p>"You will live the rest of your life as the mortals you terrorized," Esti continued, his hands glowing as well. Between the two of the twins, a colossal orb of pulsing magic expanded out of nothingness, as gargantuan as the gods on either side of it. The twins each placed one hand on the orb.</p><p>"You will know hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. You will know sickness, and you will know old age. You are a god no longer, and the day will come when time shows you less mercy than we do today, and then you will trouble nobody any more." With that, the magic between them pulsed and the twins each held their free hand down towards the world. Rays of cascading light in every shade of the rainbow, forest green and lightning blue and ruby red, descended upon Alethea as the crowd, Jarir and all, worked itself into a frenzy at the sight of the Twins' judgement.</p><p>The rainbow ended, and Alethea slumped in her chains. The Twins lowered their hands and dispelled the power between them, but their eyes did not cease their merciless glows.</p><p>"... however," Esti began, "even as a mortal, you may stir the hearts of those who care not for their fellows. It is such that we banish you, Alethea, to the far corners of the universe. Never return to our world!"</p><p>"Find some distant planet and live out your days there, and should Lutra and its swarm find your home, pray they are as eager to obey you as a mortal as they were in the rebellion," Ketri finished.</p><p>"NOW, BEGONE!" they commanded, holding out their hands and pointing to the horizon. Blinding, sickly yellow light engulfed the tower Alethea was housed in, and when it was gone, there was no trace of the former goddess to be seen. The clouds closed up, and the Twins were gone.</p><p>The crowd continued to scream, scream for blood, scream for death, scream for vengeance. But bit by bit the din faded, and the crowd dispersed. There were jobs to go to, food to buy, long-term patients to check in on. The world continued to turn.</p><p>Jarir turned away and looked for someone with a portal ability to bring him back home from the capitol. All the while, there was a sickening pit in his gut. He wished the Twins had killed Alethea. She'd... she'd just done so <em>much!</em> There was this young spider girl, barely into puberty, who'd had half her face melted off by chemical weapons. An old human man who'd died on his lap, gray hair falling out by the clumps as he coughed up bits of his internal organs. The horror of it all was just... just impossible to describe, and her punishment was to just have her live as any old mortal? Far away in the corners of the universe, away from the people she'd hurt? At least make the damn <em>bitch</em> look them in the eyes and say that her little fit was worth it.</p><p>How could they let her get away with this?</p><p>It just wasn't fair.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>"Wouldn't that be WAY more fair...?"</strong>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please do leave a comment, let me know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Self-Indulgence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I do not own Mythic Ocean. Paralune does.</p><p>Chapter published August 9 2020.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The mortals of this universe soon became aware of a species of all-devouring moth-like beings.</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span class="u">Elena</span>
</p><p>When she was getting ready for bed, she heard a <em>huuuge</em> explosion! It scared her stiff! But Papa came by, and assured her it was just a big rock falling in the woods, and she went to sleep with dreams of finding this rock and climbing it.</p><p>She woke up when the sun rose, and there was no school because it was the summer harvest season. She dressed in her favorite work clothes, and gathered for breakfast with Mama and Papa around their big wooden table. Today it was eggs, laid by their hens and cooked up by Mama just the way she liked it. She kicked her legs while eating, looking distractedly around the dining room and the neat little plates and clocks along the shelves.</p><p>"Mama? Papa? After my chores, can I go play in the woods?"</p><p>They froze. "Darling," Papa said slowly. "You can't go in the woods today."</p><p>WHAT?! "WHAT?! That's so unfair!" she said, balling her fists and slamming them on the table. "You let me play out there all the time, I wanna go I wanna go - "</p><p>Papa held up a hand, and she went still. "Me and some of my friends are gonna go out there, looking for whatever that rock was that fell. It might not be safe, Elena. Stay where your Ma can see you, alright?"</p><p>Elena took a deep breath, ready to start ranting about what unfair stupid heads they were being about this because <em>seriously she went into the woods all the time it was just a stinking rock!</em> but then she got an idea. She let out her breath, pouted, and crossed her arms. "Fine," she lied, planning to sneak away the moment she could. "But you better tell me all about it," she sulked sulkily.</p><p>He chuckled, then leaned over to ruffle her hair. "I will, honey, don't worry. Now, eat up and get started on your chores."</p><p>"Yes, Papa," she said, digging back into her eggs. She finished with super duper speed, and as fast as thought, pushed her plate away before her tummy even knew it was full. "Bye Mama and Papa, I'm going to do my chores!" she said quickly, and then she was flying out the door.</p><p>Like Telros she was going to do her chores. Adventure was waiting!</p><p>Outside, the farm stretched in all directions. She could see the corn fields with so many stalks rising from the ground, she could get lost for-ever in them. There were the stables where all the animals were, and she was supposed to be brushing the horses today but they could wait! There was adventure to be had, just <em>waiting</em> for her to go and take it!</p><p>Elena ran to the border of the woods she lived next to, all tall and dark and deep. She picked a nice walking stick off the ground and, now fully prepared with anything she could want, she headed in.</p><p>The woods were dark and spooooky. The sun couldn't get through the branches all that well, so there were weird looking shadows all around, kinda like arms reaching out ta <em>get her!</em> Haha. But it was kinda weird, too. Normally there'd have been, like, all kinds of squirrels and birds and stuff running around. Well, the birds wouldn't be running, they'd be - anyway, it was real quiet. It was <em>definitely</em> because of that rock that fell! If only she could just find the stupid thing.</p><p>... seriously, where was it? She'd been walking in circles for-<em>ever!</em> How hidden could it be? She thought it would've, like, knocked down a bunch of trees or something. But - wait, what's that?</p><p>Elena saw something, like, moving on the ground. But it wasn't actually moving. It was just kinda rippling like it was made of water. It was some kinda trail of purple slime all along the ground. She hopped closer and bent her knees to get a closer look. Yeah, super weird. The moss and grass and stuff around it was gone, like it'd been eaten up. There seemed to be something growing <em>around</em> the slime, too, but it was too small for her to see right.</p><p>Elena got up and followed the trail of slime back. It had to be coming from <em>somewhere,</em> right?</p><p>She followed the winding trail of gunk into the forest. It was still super quiet, too. And as she went deeper and deeper, she saw more of the purple slime trails coming from all different directions, and it looked like each of them was, like, making the plants around them rot <em>super duper</em> fast. Maybe she could scrape some of this and bring it back for the compost bin? Oh, but she didn't have anything to put it on... maybe if she could find a large, flat rock to carry it on? And something to pick the stuff up with - <em>WHOA!</em></p><p>That was <em>definitely</em> not a rock!</p><p>In the middle of the forest was some kind of big... purple... uh, ball? But it wasn't smooth or anything, it had a bunch of holes in it, like someone had come by with a scoop and <em>scooped</em> a bunch of it out. And it wasn't just big, it was <em>big!</em> Like, twice as big as Papa. It was absolutely the thing that had fallen at night, too, because a bunch of the trees around it had been blown back and even torn up from the ground. The lines of slime were coming from it, too, first coming up from the little crater it'd fallen into and then going out into the woods in all directions.</p><p>Carefully, Elena crept closer to it. What was this thing? It was so weird. She got closer to the surface, and saw that inside one of the 'scoops' was some weird, white stuff shimmering in the little bits of sunlight that got through the trees.</p><p>((This one feels... approaching one...)) she heard.</p><p>"WHA!" Elena screamed, jumping out of her skin. "WHAT WAS THAT?!"</p><p>((... alarmed. But, familiar sounds and words, like this one dreamed...))</p><p>There it was again! Some kind of... voice in her head. It was quiet and calm, and she couldn't really tell if it was a boy's voice or a girl's voice. Sounded like a kid, too. Maybe a little younger than her, like that little girl that sometimes came over with Mister Marley.</p><p>Was there something... in the rock?</p><p>"H-Hello?" she asked, swallowing her fears. She had to be brave. She wasn't afraid of anything! Besides, what was a <em>voice</em> going to do? "Is anyone there?"</p><p>((This one is here in pod. Where is new one? Outside pod?))</p><p>"Pod? Is that this big thing?" Wait. "Are you... inside it?"</p><p>((Thinking yes. This one lives in pod and eats favorable-plants. Is new one outside pod?))</p><p>She looked around. "Uh, yeah."</p><p>((... this one did not know what was outside pod. This one dreamed of big dark empty space, with many small lights.))</p><p>"Uh, what? You mean, like, the night sky?"</p><p>((Unsureness.)) The voice paused. ((This one is curious what outside of pod looks like.))</p><p>"Well... you landed in a forest. My papa said you were just a big rock that fell but I guess he was wrong! There's trees all around, and there's so many that it's actually pretty dark." She looked around a bit more. "There's, uh, grass and stuff too, but your thingy destroyed a lot of it when it fell, I guess. It's just kinda laying in a dirt hole. It's sending out this weird purple slime, too. Kinda gross."</p><p>((New one says many unfamiliar words. Maybe dreaming makes more understanding of trees and grass and dirt.))</p><p>She giggled. "You talk funny." She walked closer to the pod's crater, sat, and dangled her feet down. "So what are ya, anyway?"</p><p>((This one... does not understand new one's question.))</p><p>"Like, what kinda thing are ya? Papa told me how there's manticores and dragons and stuff in real far away places, but I've never seen one. Uh, except in books. So? Whadaya look like?"</p><p>((This one is unsure what words to say to explain. Never seen other creature. Only has sense of self and eating favorable-plants.))</p><p>"Huh, okay. Guess it must be pretty dark in there." She brightened up. "Ooh, can you come out?"</p><p>((... this one... does not know. This one has feelings of openness and moving in pod, but this one has not tried.)) The voice got more scared. ((This one is unsure what is outside pod. Outside may be unfavorable. Inside pod has plants to remove hunger. This one stays inside.))</p><p>"Aww," she said. "Do you at least have a name?"</p><p>((What is 'name'?))</p><p>"Huh? You mean you don't? It's like, what people call you when they want your attention. Like, my Mama always says <em>Elena, come inside and do your chores</em> when I'm out playing sword-fight with the scarecrows."</p><p>((Strangeness. This one dreams sometimes and words come. Word 'Sitran' favorable. Is this one's name Sitran?))</p><p>She shrugged. "If ya want it to be, I guess."</p><p>((Happiness.)) Another pause. ((This one has new thoughts. Strange thoughts about new one.))</p><p>Elena flopped over onto her stomach and propped her head up in her hands. "Like?"</p><p>((Companionship. Company. Thought-sharing with new one is favorable, more than with smaller not-minds.))</p><p>Not minds? Oh, it meant, like, animals and junk. Elena was ready to say something, when she heard someone, far away but getting closer, call out "Here, look at this!"</p><p>She gasped, and turned to the pod. "That's Papa! He must've found you, too!"</p><p>((This one is not understanding 'Papa'.))</p><p>"... Elena?!" he called out.</p><p>She winced, slouching her shoulders. "Crud."</p><p>In no time at all, Papa and some of his grown-up friends came pushing through the woods, stepping uneasily around the purple slime Sitran's pod was making, and when she locked eyes with Papa she knew she was <em>so busted.</em></p><p>"Elena!" he shouted, running over to her. He picked her off the ground and brushed her off, fussed with her hair, and looked her over. "Honey, what are you doing out here?"</p><p>"Um, I uh, wanted to see what the rock was." She glanced up at him, then back down when she saw how <em>really</em> mad he looked. "It's, uh, not a rock."</p><p>"I can see, that, are you okay? Did you touch those tendrils?" he asked, gesturing to the slime. She shook her head fiercely, and he sighed in relief. "Thank Telros. Let's get you out of here while we break open this thing - "</p><p>"NO!" she shouted, her heart suddenly leaping into her throat. "Papa, no, it's Sitran's home!"</p><p>He let go of her and furrowed his eyebrows. "Elena, who's Sitran?"</p><p>"She's my new friend! She lives in that thing and she talks in your head!" Elena looked back at the pod-thingy. "Sitran, say hello! This is my papa!"</p><p>There was a tense moment where he kept looking down at her, but then his eyes widened and he let go, stepping away. "What in Telros's name?"</p><p>She giggled nervously. "See? I told you!"</p><p>He sighed, and dragged a hand down his face. "Elena, sweetie, could you wait here a moment?"</p><p>"Um, okay."</p><p>She was in so much trouble, wasn't she?</p><p>Papa went to his friends that he'd brought over, one of whom had a <em>giant</em> freaking pickaxe slung over his shoulder, and started talking with them in hushed tones. She could make out a bit of it, though, because elf ears were awesome.</p><p>"... some sort of beast from the heavens..."</p><p>"... can't be, it spoke to me. Not just some beast..."</p><p>"... report a new race?"</p><p>"... can't be with just one..."</p><p>"...doesn't seem dangerous. Sounds scared to me..."</p><p>Papa came back and knelt down, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. "Elena, honey."</p><p>She looked up at him hopefully. "Yes, Papa?"</p><p>"You're grounded."</p><p>She looked down. "Yes, Papa."</p><p>((Is new one in danger?)) Sitran asked, worriedly.</p><p>Elena looked over towards the pod-thingy. "No, I'm not. Thanks for worrying," she said. Then she turned back to Papa and asked, "For how long?"</p><p>He glanced off into the woods, humming, then looked back at her. "Your mother and I will discuss that. You shouldn't have run off after we told you not to, and you <em>certainly</em> shouldn't have done that before doing your chores, do you understand?" She nodded demurely, tracing a line in the dirt with a shoe. "Now, let's go home and get your chores done. You can come back out to meet your..." He looked over her shoulder at the pod. "... friend once you're not grounded anymore."</p><hr/><p>So... she got grounded for a week, which <em>sucked.</em> The only time she was allowed out was for chores on the farm. She didn't even get to have her friends over, ugh. At least she got to practice, like, swinging a sword in her room. She wasn't any good, though, which double-sucked because she wanted to be a knight when she grew up.</p><p>That.</p><p>Week.</p><p>
  <em>Sucked!</em>
</p><p>But then she finally wasn't grounded, yay! She got up super early and made sure to do <em>all</em> her chores, out by the vegetable fields that day, and then she was running into the woods with a basket of lunch dangling from an arm. She hadn't seen Sitran in a week - well, <em>teeeeechnically</em> she'd never seen Sitran at all - and she couldn't wait!</p><p>Elena headed towards where she thought she remembered the pod had fallen, and soon enough she saw one of the trails of purple slime and <em>whooooa.</em></p><p>The forest had changed a <em>lot</em> since she was last here. A bunch of the trees around the purple slime were fallen over and kinda... rotting away, and from the slime these giant purple and blue ferns grew up tall, as high up as her head! It was like something out of a storybook. Had it really changed this much in just a week?</p><p>She made her way to the pod, and strange enough, nothing was growing over it. Like, she'd have expected some creeper vines or something after a week, but nope, nothing! Just more ferns.</p><p>"Hello? Sitran, I'm back!"</p><p>((Friendly one returns,)) she heard. ((Happiness.))</p><p>"Did you know there's all sorts of ferns outside your pod? I think, like, it's making the ferns with the slimy stuff."</p><p>((This one does not know word 'ferns'. Confusion.))</p><p>"They're, like, big and purple and blue. Kinda, uh, made of lines stacked on top of each other? I dunno how to explain it."</p><p>((Friendly one describes something that sounds like pod-plants. This one eats pod-plants. Maybe eating outside ferns too?))</p><p>She gasped happily. "Does this mean you're willing to come out?!"</p><p>Sitran was quiet. Then, ((This one... had dreams. Creatures hunting and eating other creatures like this one hunts and eats ferns.)) Sitran's voice grew quieter, scared. ((Will... this one be hunted and eaten if this one leaves pod?))</p><p>"Nuh uh, no way!" she said, standing up tall and proud. "Anything tries to get you, they'll have to get through me, first!"</p><p>((Gratefulness. This one will leave pod if friendly one provides safety.))</p><p>Then the pod <em>shifted.</em> Elena hadn't noticed it before, but one of its faces was covered in thick vines. Or, uh, something that <em>looked</em> like vines, at least. They began to shrivel up, like they were being dried in super-fast-speed, and one by one they dropped away to reveal the dark interior of the pod...</p><p>A greenish... <em>thing</em> chirped and stuck its head out. It was some kinda giant bug, like a caterpillar but shorter and fatter, barely large enough to come up to her knees. Its shell was covered in small bumps, and beneath its body the legs were just, uh, slightly larger bumps. It had six freakishly huge bug-eyes, the kind that were made of smaller pieces all stuck together and looked kinda like blue glass, and around its face were these moving leaf-like things. It didn't have a mouth like her, but instead these tiny claw-things around a small mouth-hole. Was this Sitran?</p><p>"Oh my gosh!" she squealed, jumping down into the dirt hole to bring her closer to the bug-thing. "You're so <em>cute!"</em></p><p>Sitran backed up, her six leaf-thingies waving around. ((This one is confused by word cute.)) She looked around the outside. ((There is much light and green here,)) she said, awed. ((This is where friendly one lives?))</p><p>"Well, not <em>exactly</em> here, my house is a bit over that way," she said, pointing. "Come on, didn't ya want to see these ferns? This way!" She climbed up from the hole, and Sitran followed, slowly moving her nubby legs against the soft dirt to come up. She led the bug-thingy to one of the ferns, and let Sitran approach. "Well? Whaddaya think?"</p><p>Sitran brushed her leaf-thingies near the fern, then bounced excitedly and chirped. ((These ones are pod-food plants! This one hungers again. Friendly one's timing is favorable!)) Sitran crawled closer and... whoa, that was weird. She was eating, but she did it by, like, ripping a piece of the fern off with her mouth-claw-thingies and shoveling it into her hole. It was gross, it was freaky, and it was <em>so cool!</em></p><p>She was going to have a <em>lot</em> of fun with her new bug buddy, she could tell.</p><hr/><p>Elena came back the next day. Then the day after. It became a thing, at least whenever she could get away from the farm.</p><p>Sitran was so much fun! She had this weird way of looking at things that were so normal to Elena that she never would've considered. She was always ready to learn new things, or new games, and to top it off, she was <em>adorable!</em></p><p>((This one tried pulling green fronds off of trees, bring them into pod. Pod made into fern plants!)) Sitran said excitedly. ((Plants had not grown back inside pod until this one tried that.))</p><p>"That's so cool," she said, laying on her stomach with her legs kicking behind her. "Maybe the slime and stuff is like, some super-composter that turns stuff into ferns for you!" She gasped and got an idea. "What if I bring an apple from the farm?"</p><p>((What is word farm? Apple this one thinks type of food?))</p><p>She nodded excitedly. "Uh huh! Apples are delicious. We grow them on the farm, and it's about time for them to be ripe." Oh, wait, Sitran'd had a question. "A farm's like, basically this place where we grow all sorts of food to eat. Kinda like how stuff grows out here in the woods, but on purpose!"</p><p>((Growing things on purpose so that hunger goes away,)) Sitran said quietly, more to herself than to Elena. ((This one has many thoughts.))</p><hr/><p>She walked along at a leisurely pace, deliberately going slowly, when she felt a tap on her leg.</p><p>Elena looked down and there was Sitran, who'd nudged her with a mandible. ((This one tags friendly one. Now this one will have a head start before friendly one hunts this one!)) she said happily, before turning around and scurrying as fast as her nubby little legs could carry her.</p><p>"Ah!" she said in mock anger. "I'm gonna get you!</p><hr/><p>"Hiya! Ha!" she said, practicing her footwork while swinging the sword. Sitran sat on an elevated rock, tearing a corn cob apart while she watched her. With one big swing, Elena spun around and slashed her invisible foes and <em>WHOA!</em></p><p>The sword flew out of her hands like she was some kinda freaking amateur, right towards Sitran! She opened her mouth to scream a warning, but then it was too late and her sword just...</p><p>... just kinda... bounced off Sitran's shell. The little bug - well, not <em>so</em> little anymore, she was growing up as the years passed - jumped and shrieked in surprise.</p><p>"Sitran! I'm so sorry, are you okay?" she asked, rushing over.</p><p>Sitran's fronds curled inward. ((T-This one is... unharmed. Much fright.))</p><p>"I'm so sorry, I thought I was holding onto it tightly!" she said, pulling Sitran into a hug and rubbing her shell to comfort the poor thing.</p><hr/><p>((W-W-When will big loud thunder lights stop?)) Sitran asked, quivering in her grip as lightning flashed through the woods and rain pummeled the ground.</p><p>From inside Sitran's pod, surrounded by its strangely pulsing white lights and resting on a bed of newly-grown ferns, Elena stroked her back. "I don't know, soon I guess. These sorts of storms always burn themselves out quickly." Sitran kept shivering. "Hey, hey, shh." She leaned in and placed a quick kiss on her shell. "You're safe, I've got you."</p><p>((...g-gratefulness...))</p><hr/><p>Sobbing and wiping snot from her nose, she ran into the woods. She ran and ran until she found the area of wilderness Sitran's pod had laid claim to, full of rotting logs and tendrils of pulsing ooze. She ran to the middle where she found Sitran sitting on top of her pod, deep in thought, but the bug heard her approach and turned to face her.</p><p>((Friendly one? You have great sadness.)) Its antenna-fronds bent inwards. ((Is something the matter?))</p><p>"H-He broke up with me," she blubbered, crawling onto the pod and pulling Sitran - who'd grown larger, but so had she, so they were still the same size compared to each other - into her lap. She sniffled, and started venting to Sitran. How she really thought Mikael was The One, she'd gotten him so many gifts and gone on so many dates with him, but he just told her that... that he didn't feel the same way about her and - ! And - !</p><p>((This one has great sadness because friendly one has great sadness,)) Sitran told her. ((But friendly one will be happy in future too! So no needing be so sad now.))</p><p>She cried again, gasped for breath, and buried her face into Sitran's shell. "T-Thanks," she whimpered.</p><hr/><p>More years passed, and she finally graduated from school! She was ready to strike out on her own, out to the capitol, and become the heroic knight she'd always dreamed of being. So, naturally, once the late-night party her parents had hosted was over the first thing that came to mind was to share the good news with Sitran.</p><p>She rushed out into the woods, strong and tough enough from years of hard work in the fields and harder work training that she could run the entire distance without becoming the least bit tired... only to find something was wrong.</p><p>Normally, the ferns surrounding Sitran's pod continued to grow back as they composted the forest around them, but now they were gone. Lately Sitran had been craving more filling food than ferns, sure, and Elena'd been happy to bring her some fresh produce from Mama and Papa's farm. But never had there been <em>absolutely no</em> ferns at all, except for the very first day Sitran's pod had fallen from the heavens.</p><p>Something was wrong.</p><p>Slowing down, Elena carefully crept forward, head on a swivel and her elven ears peeled for the slightest sound. The more she looked, the more things looked... wrong. There were no fallen logs being broken down by the trails of slime. Not a blade of grass in the soil. And there was... a clearing, up ahead, where there should've been a relatively thick forest despite years of being subjected to the pod's tendrils.</p><p>There! She saw something, gnawing away at a thick oak stump. Something big and... green. With mandibles.</p><p>"Sitran?" she asked warily, approaching her. The thing looked like Sitran, but it was big. As tall as Elena herself from head to toe, to say nothing of how <em>long</em> it was. "Is that you?"</p><p>The thoughts came into her head like a waterfall, crashing and roaring but difficult to get a grip on. ((Friendly one... this one... <em>help...</em>)) came Sitran's words.</p><p>"It is you," she said, walking closer. Sitran was absolutely <em>demolishing</em> the stump, tearing through bark and inner wood with ease as her mandibles broke the tree down into chunks and swallowed them up. "What's going on?"</p><p>((This one... <em>HUNGERS.</em>)) Elena winced and held her head under the sheer weight of the thought. ((Hungers like never before. Great Hunger... not... going away. This one eats and eats but this one still hurts with it!))</p><p>"Hey, it's gonna be okay," she said, steeling herself and walking closer. Elena placed a hand on Sitran's shell and gave it a reassuring pat. "We'll find a way through this. How long have you been eating?"</p><p>Already, most of the stump was gone. ((Since bright-light was at top of sky, this one had terrible hunger. This one <em>must</em> feed hunger for... for change.))</p><p>Change?</p><p>Elena's thoughts raced, and she realized what was happening. "Sitran, I think I know what's going on. You're getting ready to grow up! There are these little things called caterpillars, really super small, that'll eat a bunch and then turn into butterflies. I think that's what's happening to you."</p><p>((But... how much will this one have to eat?)) The stump was gone and, like a beast possessed, Sitran ran out from under Elena's palm and began stripping the bark from the nearest tree.</p><p>"I don't know, Sitran," she said. "But I'll be here with you the whole way." She looked up from Sitran and around the area. Sure enough, Sitran'd done a number on the forest so far. No trees in a huge area around the pod. "Hey, let's try something. Instead of eating your way out around in a circle, try to pick a line and move forward, right?"</p><p>((This one... not understanding. How will that help Great Hunger?))</p><p>"It won't, I don't think, but it'll make it easier for the forest to grow back after, right?" It made sense to her, at least.</p><p>((This one... this one... will try. Friendly one... helps?))</p><p>"I will."</p><p>Sitran kept eating, and eating, and <em>eating.</em> She went from tree to tree, devouring entire pines and oaks while growing bigger the entire time. Elena didn't even know <em>where</em> all that food was going. It couldn't be just... <em>vanishing,</em> right? Maybe it wasn't; Sitran <em>was</em> getting bigger, even before her very eyes. It was kinda creepy to see; when she'd been growing up as a kid it'd been so slow, she couldn't even see it. But she could actually look at Sitran and <em>see</em> the bug growing larger as she consumed more and more, driven by her terrible hunger.</p><p>It broke her heart to see Sitran like this. It must've hurt so much to be so hungry, and for so long too, despite eating so much. Elena did her best to help, but she felt so <em>helpless</em> in the face of this. The best she could do was lead Sitran in a specific direction so she wouldn't eat a giant, gaping hole in the forest, or bring her berries from a bush that was off their path. But it all seemed like it was not enough, even as the full moon continued to trawl across the sky. When the sun started to come up, she began wondering if maybe Sitran really <em>would</em> keep eating like this forever. The thought that her friend, so curious and playful and scared of lightning, would be stuck like this for the rest of her life was just... she didn't want to think about it.</p><p>Until finally, <em>finally,</em> halfway through eating the latest felled tree, Sitran's mandibles stopped moving and she pulled away. ((Great Hunger is... gone?)) She tilted her head. ((Great Hunger is... gone.)) Her antenna drooped. ((This one has much exhaustion. This one returns to pod.))</p><p>"I'll come with you," Elena said, fighting back a yawn.</p><p>They backtracked through the trail of devastation Sitran had left, and Elena found herself whistling. It hadn't seemed like as much during, but by Telros, this bug could <em>eat!</em> They must've gone farther than she thought, because it took nearly an hour to find their way back to Sitran's pod.</p><p>((This one feels... urges,)) Sitran said, leaving her behind and squirming over to her pod. Then she began <em>eating the pod,</em> too, munching and crunching until it too was gone. And then... Sitran laid down on the ground, and her shell began to change color.</p><p>"I think I was right, Sitran," she said quietly, staring as her friend's shell turned larger, bluer.</p><p>((What does... friendly one... mean?)) Sitran asked, even as her eyes began to get absorbed by the growing shell. ((This one... has much fear. What is happening to this one?))</p><p>"It's like I said. Caterpillars turn into butterflies. But when they do that, first they wrap themselves in this sort of... cocoon, to keep them safe as they're changing." She walked closer and stroked Sitran's emerging cocoon gingerly. It was hard as rock, but despite that it grew outwards so fast. How could something that rigid change that fast? "I bet you'll be really pretty when you're done."</p><p>((... amusement,)) came Sitran's tired whisper. ((Will... friendly one... still be there? When change is done?))</p><p>"I will," she whispered. The cocoon was fully emerged now, blue and patterned with green, and anchored into the ground. "I'll get some camping supplies from home, and I'll be right here, for as long as it <em>takes,</em>" she said, her voice cracking. A tear traced its way down her cheek, and she wiped it away. Why was she crying? It... wasn't like Sitran was dying. "Take care, Sitran."</p><p>((... thankfulness. This one... had much fear, when Great Hunger gripped this one. Friendly one had... spoken about... farm, and growing things to feed others. This one had fear that this one would eat farm in Great Hunger, and would hurt friendly one. But... friendly one... kept this one... from hurting friends. Much... thankfulness...))</p><p>And then there was nothing else from Sitran. Elena stared up at the cocoon, smiling wistfully, and turned around for home.</p><p>She returned not long after. She brought pots and pans. A fire-starter-stick. A sleeping roll, too. She set up a quick little lean-to shelter using the few trees still in the area, and camped out next to Sitran's cocoon.</p><p>She meant what she'd said. Going off to the big city, becoming a squire, all that could wait.</p><p>As long as it took.</p><hr/><p>Mama and Papa came by a few times to check up on her and Sitran, and to wish Sitran their best wishes. Elena spoke to her too, but she didn't know if she could hear. She seemed to be in a <em>really</em> deep sleep.</p><p>It took a few days. She boiled water to drink, and caught small game with traps to supplement her diet of mushrooms and roots. But one morning, while she was stoking her campfire, she heard a wet <em>SHLICK</em> and looked up with a start.</p><p>The cocoon's blue and green had turned gray when she wasn't looking, and now a giant, jagged leg had torn a gash through the top. Another leg followed, then another, then three more. There was a flurry of movement, of the cocoon splitting open wider and wider, and a giant... <em>thing</em> burst out.</p><p>It wasn't a butterfly, but something like a moth. A <em>giant</em> moth, many times taller than Elena, with a grayish shell, a ring of fuzzy teal fur around its head, and six long, leaf-like green antennae around its head. Its abdomen was long and white, patterned with streaks of black. It squirmed about on top of its wrecked cocoon, righted itself, and then she caught a glimpse of its wings. They were wide and the bluish green of the sea, but folded against its back. The moth-like creature opened and closed them a few times, and she could actually <em>see</em> them growing in size with each fanning. There was some kind of marking on the wings, too, like a brilliant yellow star.</p><p>"Sitran?" she asked, awestruck.</p><p>She jerked her head over to look down at Elena, and tilted her head to the side. ((This... one...)) Even Sitran's voice had changed, to a proud and mature woman's commanding order. They'd both grown up, now.</p><p>"Sitran," she said, half laughing. She got up and approached gently. "How do you feel?"</p><p>((This one... feels... strange. New. Strong. Hungry.)) With a final flex, her wings opened to their full expanse, fluttering gently in the breeze. ((Memories... fuzzy.))</p><p>"Do you remember me?" she asked, placing a hand on her chest.</p><p>Sitran stared down at her, unflinching and eerily still, like a statue. ((This one... thinks so. One who is friendly. One who taught this one games, and held it in storms, and helped during Great Hunger.)) She looked up away from her, at the clear sky. With all the trees she'd eaten during her feeding frenzy, there was a lot of sky to see. ((This one... not knowing of what to do now.))</p><p>Elena laughed. "I mean, if you want, you could come with me. To the capitol, I mean. I wanted to train to be a knight, to help people in need. You don't have to, but..." <em>But I'd really like you to be there with me.</em></p><p>((This one... wishes to be with friendly one, too. But this one hungers, now. Will friendly one come with this one as this one eats?))</p><p>She laughed. "Yeah, I bet you must be hungry, after all that. Come on, let's get you something from the farm."</p><p>((Agreement.))</p><p>Elena and Sitran made their way back to the farm, just in time to catch Papa feeding the pigs in their sty. He jolted in surprise when he saw Sitran's new, mothy body towering alongside Elena. "By Telros!" he shouted, stumbling and placing a hand to his chest. "Elena, you're back! Is... is that Sitran?"</p><p>She nodded. "It is! Can I get her something to eat from the fields? She's pretty hungry after all of..." She waved towards Sitran's body in general. "... all of this."</p><p>He smiled. "Sure you can. You'll be leaving soon?" She nodded. "Then let me get your mother, we can say goodbye to the two of you properly." Papa looked again at Sitran, and whistled lowly. "Telros take me, to think it'd grow up <em>that</em> big..."</p><p>Laughing, Elena led Sitran over to the apple orchard. She moved oddly on her long, spindly bug legs, half stumbling at times. It must've been pretty weird to wake up with legs, like, a million times longer than they were before. Their edges looked real sharp, too, and she kept punching holes in the dirt with every step. When they arrived, Elena gestured to the trees and said, "Go ahead. Just, uh, make sure to eat the apples, not the actual trees, okay?"</p><p>((This one understands. Trees make growing the apples. Consuming trees means no more consuming apples.)) And then, with a graceful flutter, Sitran took off and landed on one of the trees. Elena watched in fascination as she clambered over the boughs and leaves, snatching up the apples one at a time before hopping on over to the next tree. It took a dozen or so trees worth of apples for Sitran to come back down, but that wasn't a big surprise. Something <em>that</em> big definitely needed a lot of food to keep going.</p><p>((This one had dreams, during Great Change,)) Sitran said as they walked over to the house.</p><p>"Like what?" she asked, curious.</p><p>((Dreams of great big rock houses, many others like friendly one and... almost like friendly one but not.))</p><p>She gasped. "You probably saw a city! Does this mean you have psychic dreams?" Sitran turned to stare at her curiously, and she waved it off. "Right, sorry. Anyway, yeah, I'm going to the capitol to train. It's kind of like a..." She waved her hands around. "A really big city. All the best fighters go there to become squires, and I'm gonna be one of them."</p><p>((This one will help,)) she said proudly, raising her head to the sky.</p><p>Elena smiled, then reached up and ran her fingers through the tuft of fur around Sitran's head. It was soft and delicate, and Sitran chirped happily and leaned into her hand. "I'm really happy to hear that. It'll be fun having you around!"</p><p>They made their way back to the house, but obviously Sitran was too big to fit inside, so they had a picnic outside like in the old days. Mama and Papa set out a great big blanket and a basket full of homecooked food, and they ate out in the fields while Sitran, who'd just eaten a <em>ton,</em> sat and watched. They swapped stories about what happened on the farm, and shared tales of the rest of the world to Sitran, who in turn shared some of her stranger dreams with them. She smiled and laughed, but it was all overshadowed, in her mind, by the thought that she'd be leaving once this was all done. She'd be truly out in the world, truly out to make her mark.</p><p>The time came. They wrapped up, and Elena went into her room and packed. Her instruments would all have to stay. She'd bring what she needed, her journal, and nothing more. She hugged and kissed Mama and Papa, promising she'd take care of her sword, that she'd stay safe, all while Sitran stood on the roof, as awkwardly as a giant psychic moth could. But it came to pass that she was on the road, the farmhouse of her childhood receding past her, with Sitran moving alongside her in a strange stopping-starting hop to keep pace with Elena's shorter legs.</p><p>"Well," she said. "We're on our own."</p><p>((We are,)) Sitran said. ((Will friendly one do much walking to reach capitol?))</p><p>She nodded. "Mmhmm. There's some smaller towns we can stop at on the way, but yeah, it's pretty far. I'm hoping I can hitch a ride with a caravan." She eyed Sitran. "Or... maybe ride you?" Sitran's head rose and her antennae waved excitedly. "Well, maybe not. I don't wanna fall." Elena waved it off. "Doesn't matter though, because the world won't know what hit it! The adventures of Elena and Sitran are finally starting!"</p><hr/><p>"Whaddaya mean we can't stay the night?" she demanded furiously.</p><p>He pointed out the open door, to where Sitran had huddled close to the ground and stuck her head in. Her crown of fluffy fur stuck awkwardly around the doorframe. "Your pet's scaring people off! Either have it go sleep in the forest, or go <em>join</em> it in the forest!"</p><p>"Sitran isn't my <em>pet!</em> She can talk, and she's a damn sight smarter than you, too!"</p><p>His face turned red. "OUT!"</p><hr/><p>"Hey!" she shouted, chasing after the caravan. "Hey, wait! Are you taking passage to - " As though death were on their tails, they fled off into the road. " - Fungra... city," she trailed off. With a sigh, she turned back to Sitran. "Well, I guess I gotta keep trying. Someone's bound to give us a ride eventually."</p><p>((This one hopes so. This one...)) Sitran huddled lower. ((... does not find friendly one being ignored and hated favorable.))</p><p>Elena sighed and slumped, downtrodden. "Yeah. I don't think it's 'favorable' either. Come on, let's pitch camp."</p><hr/><p>"Hey, Sitran?"</p><p>A nearby tree rustled, and Sitran's head peeked out from on top with her six blue eyes glowing in the darkness. ((Friendly one shares thoughts with this one?))</p><p>"I was just thinking, doesn't it bother you? Everyone thinking you're just some dumb animal, I mean."</p><p>((This one does not mind,)) she said happily, swaying her top two antennae. ((This one can then speak thoughts with confused ones. Confused ones' reactions, much amusement!)) she said cheekily.</p><p>She snorted a laugh. "Yeah, it <em>is</em> pretty funny. It just bothers me."</p><p>((This one is thankful that friendly one cares.))</p><hr/><p>"Here we are!" she said excitedly, gesturing to the spires of marble and granite sticking up from the base of the mountain. "The capitol, Fungra city."</p><p>((This one thinks... capitol is very large,)) Sitran said faintly from beside her. She was huddled low against the ground, her iridescent wings spread wide open, as if at any moment the city would come to life and trample her.</p><p>"You don't have to come in if you don't want to," she said, rubbing her fingers over the smooth shell between Sitran's larger pair of eyes. "It, uh, might actually be better if you wait out here in the woods. You'll probably spook everyone if you come flying in over the walls."</p><p>((This one... agrees with plan. This one waits here while friendly one finds knight training.))</p><p>"Alright, I'm off. Stay safe!" she said, leaving Sitran behind. Elena shifted her bag, and headed towards the gates.</p><p>She made her way to the cobblestone road that led up to the gates, and fell into the crowd of people coming to and from the city. Her head swiveled back and forth so fast she feared she'd get a crick, and her eyes couldn't stop wandering over... over <em>everything!</em> There, driving a horse-drawn carriage out of the city, that was a <em>dwarf! </em>Over there, that was the famous tower of Isarack where the wizard Tulvor personally held off the demon hordes! There, a small tent set up outside the city, selling necklaces and souvenirs!</p><p>Elena walked past the gate, and ha! Her feet thumped on the wooden drawbridge! A tavern over there, squeezed between a mason and a jeweler! The palace up ahead! The coliseum far to her right! It was all just <em>so</em> <em>much!</em> She was over the moon, her heart was so light it threatened to drag her into the sky, it was finally happening, she was finally here, she was -</p><hr/><p>" - what do you mean I can't become a squire?!" she demanded furiously.</p><p>The man behind the counter, short and squat with biceps nearly the size of his head, scribbled on a piece of paper with a quill. He didn't even bother looking up at her. "Elves are not accepted for squirehood," he drawled, as if he had given this speech a million times before.</p><p>She sputtered. "What? Why? I brought my own sword and everything," she said, slinging off her bag and showing the hilt of the sword she'd brought from home.</p><p>"Doesn't matter." He still wasn't looking up. As if reciting from a book - which he may very well have been - he said, "Elves do not possess the disposition for muscle growth and endurance that knightly duties often require and so are prohibited from squirehood."</p><p>"Well what if I <em>do</em> have - " she started.</p><p>He held up a hand and look up. He wriggled his salt-and-pepper mustache. "Look, kid." She bristled. "I've been around before the law was written. Every elf that ever came through swore up and down on Telros's name that they're different, and they never are. It's just not worth the hastle. Go make your name somewhere else," he said, brushing her off.</p><p>She'd bristled before, but now she was doing her best imitation of a porcupine. "I will!" she snarled, whirling around and stomping out. She slammed the door for good measure because <em>screw them.</em></p><p>Elena made her way out of the city with a stormcloud over her head. The glitter of the capitol was dulled to her now, all of it made of lies and without any substance. At least her parents on the farm did good work feeding people. Feeding <em>these</em> ungrateful people. She stomped her way all the way back to the forest, where Sitran had curled up on a treetop like a giant, carapace-covered cat. She perked her head up when Elena arrived, and crawled down the tree to greet her.</p><p>((Friendly one... returns?)) Sitran hesitated, then dipped its head. ((Friendly one has great sadness and hurt.))</p><p>"I don't wanna talk about it," she said, sitting down and leaning against a tree trunk. Elena let out a long breath. "I don't know what to do, now."</p><p>Sitran was quiet. Then, ((Friendly one... wished to become warrior in city. Was not allowed. Why?))</p><p>She quirked a smile. "Can't hide anything from you. It's cause I'm an elf, can you believe? Can't grow enough muscle, my ass."</p><p>Sitran cocked her head. ((Why does friendly one need other ones to allow her to be warrior?))</p><p>"That's not just it. It's not just that they won't let me, I need the <em>training</em> so I don't get myself killed the first time I protect a caravan from bandits. I've..." Warmth finally began to sting at her eyes, and she huddled up as tears started to flow. "I've wanted this since I was a little girl, and just like that, it's - " Her voice cracked. "I don't know what to do," she sobbed, crying into her arms.</p><p>After a moment, she felt something long and hard come to rest across her arms. She looked up to see Sitran peering down at her worriedly, resting one of her long, sharp legs on Elena. ((... why does friendly one want to be warrior?)) she asked gently.</p><p>"I wanted to help people. I wanted to save people, be someone others could look at and then they'd think, they'd think 'we're safe now'. But, I don't know how..."</p><p>Sitran's leg pressed down comfortingly. ((Then friendly one does not need large city to learn. Friendly one can help others now, and this one will protect friendly one until friendly one learns enough from doing.))</p><p>Elena sniffled, then looked up. She wiped the blurry tears from her eyes and smiled. "You mean it?"</p><p>((Friendly one protected this one during big loud thunder lights, and was there during Great Hunger and change. This one helps now during friendly one's Great Sadness.))</p><p>She laughed quietly. "... thanks, Sitran."</p><hr/><p>That was how they started living a life on the road, doing odd jobs for whatever town they came across and living off the land otherwise. Sitran, despite only eating plants, was a terrifyingly good hunter and could easily provide for both of them, so it wasn't a hard life.</p><p>It was when they came across their first caravan on the road that they had a break. After making sure the drivers didn't lose their minds at the sight of Sitran, and showing them her sword, she got a job escorting them to their destination. The pay was good, and she had fun chatting with the shepherds as she escorted them. She was actually useful, too, because there was a moment when dire wolves tried to make a move on the caravan at night, and she and Sitran were there to ward them off!</p><p>After her employers reached their destination, she got a room at an inn, with Sitran fluttering in the nearby prairie. She slept with a light heart and hope for the future. Her parents had always told her that life would throw curveballs at her, that she'd have to roll with the punches, that she probably wouldn't end up where she'd imagined, but she'd make it anyway. And she believed it.</p><hr/><p>It turned out, bandits and highwaymen weren't too intent on attacking anyone escorted by a giant moth. But wild animals weren't always so cautious, especially around something that looked like a blown-up version of a harmless bug, <em>especially</em> ones that were out of their minds with starvation.</p><p>Which was how, on her third assignment, Elena killed her first bear. She didn't even know bears came out this far, but she guessed hunger did strange things. She ducked under its paw and tore it open with her sword, throat to tail, moments before Sitran pounced on its back and skewered it with her razor-sharp legs.</p><p>That was the first thing she'd killed.</p><hr/><p>The first person came soon after.</p><p>She and Sitran got separated on an escort job, and she stared at a burly, hairy man, coming at her with deceptive swiftness and a butterfly knife. She didn't think, she just <em>moved</em>, and then he was on the floor, drowning in his own blood. It was... horrible, but she was paralyzed and couldn't do anything but watch, couldn't even end him quickly. She just... stared, cold and numb.</p><hr/><p>That night, Sitran came to her with a bucket of water in her mandibles, and she gratefully took it to wash the taste of vomit from her mouth. Once done she huddled back up, trembling and cold. She'd known she'd have to do this. She'd known it since she was a kid. This was stupid, why was it affecting her like this? Why couldn't she just get over it? If she got like this every t-time she had to kill someone she'd... she'd... she'd never...</p><p>She collapsed against Sitran's underside and sobbed into her crown of fur, while the insect gently stroked her back long into the night.</p><hr/><p>The world kept turning.</p><p>Days turned into weeks.</p><p>Weeks turned into months.</p><p>And she decided to take up Sitran on her offer, which was how she was currently...</p><p>"WHOOO!" she shouted, pumping her hands into the air and into the cloud right above her. It was <em>cold</em>, to her surprise, cold and wet just like fog and not at all a solid mass like it looked from the ground. Beneath her she could see the countryside in all directions, see the squares and circles farmland was divided up into. Elena saw the roads meandering through the woods, the hamlets and towns and cities connected together by them, the mountains in the distance. It was all so incredible, so breathtaking.</p><p>And it wasn't just the amazing flight she was on, but where they were going and why. They'd received a job from a city. Someone had actually come and <em>contacted</em> her and Sitran, asking for them by name. Their fame was spreading, she was making a name for herself! So what if most of that was probably just Sitran being enormously eyecatching? It was all finally coming together.</p><p>Screw knighthood. This was where she belonged.</p><hr/><p>She returned from the armorsmith, clanking and clinking in her newly purchased set of chainmail. Good enough to deflect a slashing blade, and the padding underneath could protect her from most arrows, too. It'd really only be hammers and stuff she'd have to watch out for, now. Well, magic too, but that was a given.</p><p>And to her amusement, she found Sitran huddled on the side of the street, wings folded against her back like a shell, as she leaned over something. Carefully, gingerly, Sitran lowered her head and grasped something in her mandibles... <em>oh!</em> She was turning a page! A glance up confirmed that, indeed, Sitran was sitting outside the library.</p><p>"Hey there," she said, grabbing her attention. "How do I look?" she said, giving a quick twirl to show Sitran her armor from all angles.</p><p>((Beloved one looks very armored and safe,)) Sitran said.</p><p>"So, what've you got there? I didn't know you could read," she said, taking a spot next to the moth.</p><p>((This one cannot read. This one was interested in understanding strange symbols that beloved one does, so this one came to strange symbol place for strange symbol book.)) She cocked her head and stared down at the book with something approaching frustration. ((This one... does not know where to start.))</p><p>She laughed quietly and sidled in closer. "Well, here, let me help. Oh good, it's a children's book, so you're starting light." She flipped around a bit, then pointed at what she'd found. "So, let's go over the alphabet..."</p><hr/><p>Sitran was covered. Absolutely <em>covered.</em> In toddlers.</p><p>Elena stifled a laugh at the sight. Sitran didn't seem to be bothered, though. If anything, she was delighted by the kids climbing over her back and poking at the hard bone of her wings, chirping and cooing softly to them. She had a book in her forelegs, too, and some of the kids were reading it to her.</p><p>"So, how's the local wildlife treating you?" she said cheekily.</p><p>Sitran looked up and chirped a greeting. ((Little ones are helping this one read symbols.)) She looked around at them. ((Please give greetings to beloved one.))</p><p>"Hey Miss Vienla," the kids greeted as one.</p><p>"Alright kids, Sitran and I need to get going. Say goodbye to her!"</p><p>"Aww."</p><p>"Bye Miss Sitran!"</p><p>"Bye!"</p><p>"Bye!"</p><p>One by one the kids left, and Sitran stood up to her full length and opened her wings. The sun shone down on her, and for a moment Elena was struck by how majestic she was, how awe-inspiring and beautiful. Her heart skipped a beat. "Hey," she said faintly, her train of thought gone.</p><p>Sitran laughed telepathically. ((Is beloved one ready to depart?))</p><p>She shook herself out of it. "Um, yeah. Let's go," she said, climbing onto her back, and within moments they were off.</p><p>They flew for a while, and Elena looked around at the countryside's vista. The setting sun made it all look so strange, covered in rust and oblong shadows. She couldn't help but keep thinking about Sitran covered in the children, though, and eventually she leaned over and spoke up over the wind. "Do you ever think about kids?" she asked.</p><p>((How does beloved one mean?))</p><p>"I mean, you're the only one of your kind I've ever seen. I'm sorry if this is a sore topic, but... I'm just curious."</p><p>((... this one had... dreams, when this one was small. Dreams of others like this one, and ways to make others that take only one.))</p><p>She blinked. "So, wait, you could make kids on your own? Like, you don't need another moth?"</p><p>((This one does not think so. But... then others like this one would need food for Great Hunger too. And then their other ones, and then theirs.)) Beneath her, Sitran shuddered. Actually <em>shuddered,</em> disturbed. ((This one... does not mind being only one of this one's kind. Especially not with that thought in this one's mind.))</p><p>Elena nodded. "Right, right."</p><hr/><p>"Mom! Dad!" she shouted, running up to embrace her parents.</p><p>"Sweetie!"</p><p>"Dear!"</p><p>She laughed as they swept her into a hug and smooched her on the cheek. She pulled away from them and let Mom mess up her hair. "Oh sweetie, you've gotten so big!"</p><p>"I think you just shrunk," she said, laughing. "I've missed you guys."</p><p>"And where's Sitran?" Dad asked. "You didn't just walk all the way here, did you?"</p><p>"Sitran's..." She looked around, then smiled. "... on the roof."</p><p>Mom and Dad turned around and gasped at the sight of her perched on the farmhouse, and Sitran chirped mischievously. ((This one surprises beloved one's parents! Surprise!)) They laughed, and Sitran fluttered over to join them on the ground.</p><p>"Oh, we have so much catching up to do," Mom said. "Honey, go get the picnic blanket, will you?" While he headed inside, Mom took her by the arm and led her away from the house. "So? How are you? Is my big strong girl a noble knight and defender of the innocent?" She smirked. "On a mighty moth steed, too?"</p><p>She rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. "... well, you see - "</p><p>"I've got the stuff!" Dad said, coming out with picnic supplies. "Oh, Sitran, we've got a fresh crop of apples growing, go help yourself."</p><p>The moth dipped her head. ((Thankfulness,)) she said, flying away to eat her fill.</p><p>Mom and Dad led her out into a field and laid out a picnic spread. Elena eagerly slung off her pack and joined them.</p><p>"So..." She took a deep breath. "I'm not a knight."</p><p>Mom and Dad gasped. "Oh, darling," he said.</p><p>She waved it off. "It's fine, really. It turns out I don't need those high-and-mighty assholes in the capitol anyway." She looked over to where Sitran was clambering over the apple trees, and smiled warmly. Her heart skipped a beat again. "Sitran and I started doing sort of volunteer work, and eventually I got really good at it." She shrugged, and grabbed a sandwich from the basket. "We've got a job that led past here, so I figured it was long past time for me to stop by."</p><p>"Well we're very happy you did," Mom said, pouring a glass of lemonade. "Tell us, tell us all about it!"</p><p>So she did. Elena left out some of the more grisly details, but she told them about how she'd been rejected in the capitol straight-up, and how it'd actually been Sitran's idea to go solo, and all the places they'd seen and the people they'd helped over the years. While Sitran was off out of earshot she also told them some of her own worries.</p><p>"Don't tell her I said this, but I feel kinda bad," she whispered. "I mean, it kinda feels like I'm slowing Sitran down. What would she be doing if she didn't have to keep tagging along with me?" She looked down at her feet. "And... I feel kinda like a fraud. Sitran's <em>stupid</em> strong, you know? Like, there was this dark mage, he threw a fireball at her, and we just had to clean the soot off her shell. It feels like... like I wouldn't be at all successful if it weren't for her carrying me. Sometimes literally."</p><p>"Oh, Elena, that's not true," Dad said, reaching over and resting a hand on her lap. When had his hand gotten so many wrinkles in it? When had their hair gotten so many more grey strands? "If Sitran didn't like being with you and helping you, do you think she wouldn't just up and leave to do what she wanted? Everyone affects everyone around them, and leaves their mark on them. Do you think I ever would've gotten into farming if it weren't for your mother?"</p><p>She rolled her eyes. "Dear Telros, not this story again." She smiled. "But yeah, I think I see what you mean."</p><p>((This one has eaten until hunger is gone,)) Sitran said, hopping over to them. ((This one wishes to share thoughts with beloved one's parents.))</p><p>"Please, scoot in," Mom said, moving aside. Sitran lowered herself and, carefully, upended the entire pitcher of lemonade into her mouth.</p><p>They laughed.</p><p>They laughed, and talked, and shared, until the sun headed for the horizon and it was time for Mom and Dad to head to sleep. They did, after all, have to get up bright and early tomorrow to work alongside their farmhands. She and Sitran remained outside, chatting a while longer.</p><p>Well. Mostly it was her talking. Sitran was uncharacteristically quiet, and she wasn't just going to let her friend stew.</p><p>"Sitran? What's eating you?"</p><p>Sitran sat up, propping herself up on her two forelegs, and looked down at her. ((This one has... many thoughts. This one wants to show beloved one something that came to this one in dreams.))</p><p>"Um, sure? WHOA!" Sitran grabbed her in her forelegs and took flight. In moments they had cleared the farm and approached the mountains. Sitran circled around one while she went limp in her grasp, trusting the moth not to drop her. Soon they came to a stop and Sitran gently set her down on a rocky nook facing the sunset.</p><p>((This one thinks... setting sun is favorable to see,)) she said. ((This one has had many thoughts about beloved one.)) Sitran sat on her hind legs, and stared down at her. The setting sun cast beautiful colors across her shell and eyes. ((Beloved one came to this one when it was in pod, and gave it bravery to see world outside. When this one was scared of loud noises and animals, beloved one stayed with it and made this one think things would end up pleasant instead of unpleasant. When this one suffered Great Hunger, beloved one helped this one and stayed with this one, even though this one was hurt by Great Hunger. Beloved one was first thing this one saw after change, when memories still were unclear.</p><p>((This one... would not be same without beloved one,)) she said, her psychic voice wavering. ((This one sees world and other ones look at this one and are happy to see this one, because beloved one wanted to help them. This one has many thoughts about beloved one, and wants to share in beloved one's life as beloved one as been there for all of this one's life.)) Her antennae lowered, and turned away bashfully. ((This one has romantic thoughts for beloved one, and hopes they are returned.))</p><p>At some point during her speech, Elena had started tearing up. She sniffled and wiped them away, and her chest absolutely roiled with emotion. By Telros, she'd been... such an idiot. And here she'd been worrying about chaining Sitran down. "Sitran, I don't know what to say. That was beautiful and I didn't - " She tripped over her own tongue. "I thought - I'd been worried that - " She sighed, breathed out, and looked up at the moth. She walked closer and put her hand on her head. "Come here, you."</p><p>Despite being many times her size, and many <em>more</em> times her weight, Sitran backed up under her advance and eventually landed on her back with a surprised squeak, beating her wings against the rock. Neither one of them had any idea what to do, it was strange and fumbling and full of awkward rotations, and it was everything she wished for.</p><hr/><p>They moved on from her childhood home. They moved across the seas and the islands and back again, going wherever their work took them.</p><p>She and Sitran had already been at ease with each other before, but now there was... something else, too. It wasn't easy for her to describe, but she and Sitran went out into fields and she braided flowers into her fur, they laid on their backs in meadows and looked for shapes in the clouds, they danced at bonfires and sang together at concerts. Money was steady, her heart was full of love, and her soul was alight with purpose.</p><hr/><p>It started like any other day.</p><p>"I spy with my little eye, something green."</p><p>Sitran looked around, startled, then turned to her with her antennae hanging. ((Unfairness! This one is surrounded by many blades of grass, how is this one to guess which one beloved one spies?))</p><p>Elena nudged her cheekily. "Well, you'd better get guessing, then."</p><p>Sitran sulked for a moment, then pointed a leg forward. ((Does beloved one spy that one?))</p><p>"Nope."</p><p>((... does beloved one spy <em>that</em> one?))</p><p>She laughed. "Nope!" she said with a skip.</p><p>Sitran gnashed her mandibles together and looked around. ((... does... does beloved one spy... entire field?))</p><p>"Ha!" She clapped her hands together. "You got it! Alright, your turn."</p><p>((Excitement!)) Sitran did a little dance on her three pairs of legs. ((This one spies with this one's eyes...)) Sitran froze, and trailed off. She didn't even put her lifted foreleg back down.</p><p>"Well?" When Sitran still didn't respond, Elena frowned. "What is it?"</p><p>((... put on armor and get on this one,)) Sitran whispered in her head.</p><p>Oh shit. Something was <em>up,</em> wasn't it? But what could it be? Elena'd <em>never</em> seen Sitran like this, <em>never</em> heard her as afraid as this. What could possibly get strong, beautiful, invincible Sitran so scared?</p><p>Whatever it was, she didn't want to stick around to find out. Elena put on her armor and readied her sword in record time. She hopped on Sitran, who shot off like an arrow the moment she was secured.</p><p>They flew up, and up, and <em>up,</em> until the sky turned darker blue, frost bit at her skin, and her breaths became shallow and faint. Sitran climbed as high up as they'd learned Elena could safely manage, and pointed at something even higher up. ((There, look. Something is coming from very high.))</p><p>Elena narrowed her eyes and peered up at where Sitran was pointing and, sure enough, there was... <em>something</em> in the sky. It just looked like a faint black dot, like a star made of darkness. But she swore she could see it... moving. Like it was constantly deforming in shape.</p><p>"... let's get back down," she whispered. "And let's get to the city, too. I don't like the looks of this."</p><p>((A-Agreement.))</p><p>That just made the unease in her gut even heavier. She could barely even remember the last time she'd heard Sitran stutter.</p><p>The nearest city was, as fortune would have it, Fungra city, the capitol of her home nation. It'd seen enormous growth in her years of adventuring, adding on a new wing to the palace, expanded the library, and even opened a college. She and Sitran swooped down towards the walls, startling several guards into pointing their bows and arrows at them.</p><p>"Halt!" one shouted. "These walls are off-limits to civilians, and - "</p><p>"Shut up, Andreas!" she shouted back. "Something's up. I mean literally, up. Look." She pointed a finger towards the sky, and the guards' eyes followed her.</p><p>"Mother of Telros," he said, looking back at her. "What is that? A black star? In the day, no less?"</p><p>"I don't know, but it spooked Sitran something fierce," she said, reaching over to scratch Sitran's furry mane. "I don't like it. Can't you, I don't know?" She waved a hand. "Ready the guard, or something? Sound the alarm?"</p><p>"Not on a hunch, but - all of you! Remain on alert!" Andreas shouted. "Lady Vienla, stay here until we get a better idea of what it is."</p><p>"On it," she said. Sitran just remained tense. Tense and quiet.</p><p>The black star in the sky grew, larger and larger until it was more akin to the size of the sun itself. But it wasn't a round disk, but rather something like a blob. It was as though Telros had gone to paint the tapestry of the sky and allowed a blot of ink to stain it. And then it <em>split,</em> first into three, then nine, then dozens of trailing-off blobs that shot in all directions. One grew closer and closer, until it darkened the sky above the capitol and the guards were rallied, aiming arrows up into the sky at the approaching... what was it?</p><p>As it got closer, the pure blackness broke up into hundreds - no, thousands - of smaller figures. It was a swarm. A swarm of...</p><p>She gasped.</p><p>"Moths," she whispered faintly, and she felt as sick and horrified as Sitran. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that this was not a swarm of moths coming to make friends with the people of the world.</p><p>The swarm descending upon the city split, as though a dome surrounded the capitol, and hundreds of moths landed upon the countryside. They landed in the meadows, in the forest, by the stream, anywhere that had anything green and growing got a moth or two or three to it. And they weren't like Sitran, either. These ones had wings the color of fire choked by its own smoke, and instead of radiant yellow symbols they each had markings, black as sin, on their wings like streaks of rain... or drops of blood.</p><p>And they were eating. Good <em>heavens</em> were they eating. She watched them chew up an entire tree in moments, and then move on to another, and another. Patches of grassless soil grew like mold before her eyes, except she was confident these moths would eat mold, too.</p><p>If every swarm that had arrived was like this... "We gotta stop them," she whispered. Then she cleared her throat, turned to the guards, and raised her sword. "We've gotta stop them!" She leaned over to whisper to Sitran, "We... can stop them, right?"</p><p>((... this one has to try,)) she said nervously, before taking off. They flew down towards the nearest moth, who'd overturned someone's private garden and was sifting through the flowers, consuming every frond it could find.</p><p>"HEY!" she shouted, grabbing its attention. It looked up to her, a dandelion impaled on its mandibles, and all her courage turned to ice. Its fur was a dark, dusty red, and even the antennae were red and bright yellow, as opposed to Sitran's green and gray. "You've... you've gotta stop, you..."</p><p>((This one demands explanation!)) Sitran said furiously. ((Where did other ones come from? Why did other ones come? Why are other ones...)) Sitran swiveled its gaze across the feasting swarm. ((... eating so much? Plants will not grow back fast enough.))</p><p>The strange, red moth tilted its head and gestured with its forelegs, but Elena didn't hear anything; it must've just been talking to Sitran. Eventually, her friend and love jerked beneath her. ((No! This one not allowing it! These ones need plants and need the animals that need the plants! Other ones <em>must</em> stop eating<em> now!</em>))</p><p>The moth remained still, then opened its wings wide. Around them, a dozen other moths took a break from feasting and turned to face them, approaching menacingly. "Um, Sitran, I think it's time to go," she said nervously.</p><p>((This one... this one agrees,)) she said, quiet and equally afraid. ((This one is just one and there are many other ones.))</p><p>They took off, leaving the moths behind. They could've easily pursued, but instead the crimson insects returned to their feast. She saw arrows and spells flying from the walls of the capitol, and a dozen or so moths took flight and approached the city. Elena squeezed her eyes shut and turned away; she'd seen Sitran shrug off pointed, weighted arrows and powerful magic alike, and seen her deal back the damage many times over.</p><p>She couldn't find it in her to watch the slaughter.</p><hr/><p>"What did it talk to you about?" she asked, once they were far enough away. They'd left behind the capitol swarm, but who knew where the others had flown off to? How much damage they'd already done?</p><p>((Other one spoke about... great dark empty space. Same that this one dreamed of before beloved one, before pod. Other ones fly in it from world to other world and eat everything they can. When one world's plants not enough, they move to next. Always more pods. Always more of other ones.))</p><p>"A world-devouring swarm," she said, in quiet horror. "And even if they just eat the plants, like, what are the cows and hydras and stuff gonna eat? Everything will..." She swallowed nervously. "Every<em>one</em> is gonna die if we don't stop them." This was so much larger than her. She'd helped merchants move their wares safely and freed towns from under the yoke of bandits. This was... this was the <em>apocalypse</em> if what Sitran had heard was right. This was something for the great hero-kings of legends, not her.</p><p>"Well, there has to be something we can do. Are they all as strong as you?"</p><p>((This one... is afraid but not knowing for sure. So... many of them. This one never in danger from anything, this one only worries about beloved one but... now...)) Sitran went quiet again.</p><p>She went quiet too as they flew onward, no destination except <em>anywhere but here.</em></p><p>Finally, she pointed to a clearing in a nearby wood. "Land over there, please." Sitran did, making wide circles to burn off their speed before settling down and letting her dismount. "How do we kill them?" she asked, taking out her sword and facing Sitran. "There's gotta be something, right? You guys have to have <em>some</em> weakness?"</p><p>Sitran hesitated, then sat and ran her forelegs over her own body. ((This one has... cracks in shell, to let this one move around. Beloved one tries putting sharp weapon in there?))</p><p>"Can I try? I'm not gonna hurt you," she said, approaching nervously.</p><p>Sitran nodded. ((This one knows. Try it on this one.)) Elena approached and readied her sword. She was quite familiar with Sitran's body and knew where all of the creases in her carapace were. She found a larger one and tried wedging her sword into it, gently. ((Also, this one thinks... of ways to fight other ones that this one has not used before. Maybe more thoughts in dreaming.))</p><p>"I'm not... sure..." She grunted. Damn, her sword couldn't even get into the <em>crack?!</em> "... not sure we have time to sleep. We've gotta... hurry before they... <em>damn it!</em>" Beaten, she stepped back. "How the hell are you guys so tough? It's like you're invincible!"</p><p>Sitran cowered to the ground and lowered her antennae. ((... other one spoke of great powerful leader one named 'Lutra'. Said leader one made other ones and made this one, said leader one has great Gift that makes all other ones and this one strong.))</p><p>"Shit," she whispered. Then she clenched her fists and, with a shout, threw her sword at the nearest tree. "<em>Shit!</em>" Elena let her legs go limp and pounded the ground with her fists. "I feel so helpless," she muttered. "I mean, I know you're so much stronger than me. I'm used to it. But at least until now, we've been fighting things <em>I</em> can hurt, too. I feel so useless."</p><p>((This one apologizes.)) Sitran crawled closer and draped her body over Elena. She took a deep breath of Sitran's scent of spearmint. ((This one... does not know how to comfort beloved one. This one does not know how to fight so many other ones. This one feels so... weak again.))</p><p>"Well, we've gotta try something, right?" she said. "Maybe... maybe if we can evacuate people somewhere. A cave, maybe, with plants. Keep something hidden until they move on?"</p><p>((This one thinks... beloved one has only plan that could work.))</p><p>"But we've gotta move. Get off me?" Sitran did, and Elena got her gear. She got onto Sitran's back and held onto her fur tightly. "We've gotta get to Mom and Dad. I know they have a cellar, maybe we can hide out there."</p><p>What she didn't say was <em>and hide enough food for how long? And then go to other farms and hide food there too? Enough so that people can repopulate after the moths eat everything else?</em></p><p>But what else could they do?</p><hr/><p>When they arrived, atop the mountainside where she and Sitran had first shared themselves with each other, Elena already knew it was too late. The moths had found the farm.</p><p>"Mom," she whispered. "Dad."</p><p>The scene beneath them was horrific. The pumpkin patch she'd played hide-and-seek in had been devoured by what looked like a single moth. The apple orchards Sitran so loved were down to tree stumps, and even those were going. The forest Sitran had grown up in, the forest that had so long ago recovered from her feeding frenzy, looked like a logging company had torn through it. Everywhere she looked was the same scene of carnage, the same pattern of blood-red moths and desolation.</p><p>This... this was too much. First the black star that she now knew was the swarm, then their arrival, the sheer magnitude of this invasion, and now this. They... they needed a miracle. An army. Divine intervention. It was all too much, too fast.</p><p>((This one... cannot find beloved ones' parents' thoughts,)) Sitran said nervously. ((This one hopes they ran away.))</p><p>"Me too," she said coldly, hand tight around her sword. Maybe she couldn't hurt a moth with it, but maybe she could distract one long enough for Sitran to do something.</p><p>((This one... tries something?))</p><p>"Go for it. It's now or never."</p><p>Sitran reared up, with Elena still holding onto her back, and flared her sea-green wings as wide as they went. She watched in amazement as hot-pink dust gathered on their insides, flowing together into four tightly packed clouds of energy. With a flap Sitran tossed them forwards, and the magic missiles streaked down onto the farm... each one aimed at a cluster of feasting moths.</p><p>There was a shrill whistle as they flew, and then...</p><p>
  <strong> <em>BOOM!</em> </strong>
</p><p>Each of the clouds exploded with enormous force, more powerful than anything she'd ever seen. They left behind enormous craters all the way down to the shattered bedrock, the shockwave blew her hair back even from so far away, and the moths caught in the explosions were torn into so many assorted limbs. Elena's breath caught in her throat and she laughed. "You can hurt them," she cheered. "You can hurt them!"</p><p>Sitran chirped, sharing her excitement, but then pointed down the mountain. ((... one was not killed by this one's attack. Should go towards other one, kill while weak.))</p><p>"Or you can just do that exploding pink thing again?" She frowned. "Or... can you do it again so soon?"</p><p>Sitran just shook her head.</p><p>"Alright, then let's go! Get it while it's down; maybe you weakened its armor and I can do something too."</p><p>((Agreement!)) They took flight and soared down the mountain, down towards the gnawed-upon corpse of her family's farm, down towards the one moth that had survived Sitran's attack.</p><p>Together they flew closer and closer, and Elena readied herself to jump off. As they approached, she could make out more details in this moth. Like all the other invaders, this one was colored in dark reds and blacks, with the faintest touch of yellow. It looked... <em>bigger</em> than the others, though. Something like a time and a half Sitran's size. It stood on its six legs, looking around curiously, as though it hadn't just been struck point blank by a magic spell that'd instantly killed dozens of other moths.</p><p>That should've been her first clue.</p><p>"RAAAHH!" she shouted, jumping off Sitran and driving her sword into the moth's armored back, right where its thorax met its head. This was it, surely she could hurt it, it'd been struck so hard and she was going so fast and the point of her sword was aimed right at a weakness and -</p><p>The moth <em>moved,</em> so fast that her eyes couldn't see anything but a blur of black and red, and then she was snatched out of the air and pinned to the ground beneath a pair of legs. She gasped as they pressed into her sides, their spikes jabbing into her as though all her armor was just cotton. She stated up at the moth's face, into its eerily familiar trio of pairs of eyes. It might've only been slightly larger than Sitran, but laying beneath it, entirely at its mercy, it may as well have been the size of a continent to her.</p><p>((Let go of beloved one!)) Sitran shouted. The moth pinning her looked up in surprise, just as Sitran crashed into it. The two tumbled off from her and she scurried to grab her sword and come help. But by the time she'd gotten her weapon back from where it'd been wrenched from her grip, the red moth had already tossed Sitran back to her. She fell on her back, legs wobbling in the air, and righted herself after a moment of disorientation.</p><p>((THIS ONE IS SURPRISED,)) a new voice said in her head, deafening and forceful in its intent, not at all like Sitran's voice. ((OTHER ONE IS STRANGE COLORED LIKE NOTHING THIS ONE HAS SEEN. HOW IS GREEN ONE COMING TO BE HERE BEFORE THESE ONES?))</p><p>"Sitran was born here!" she challenged, taking a step forward. "Her pod fell here when I was just a little girl and we've been best friends since." She glanced back at Sitran. "Are you okay?" she whispered.</p><p>((This one is... not greatly harmed.))</p><p>Not greatly? What did she mean not greatly? She'd <em>been</em> harmed at all? They had to -</p><p>((GREEN ONE FELL HERE AHEAD OF THESE ONES? GREEN ONE'S POD MUST HAVE BEEN LOST AND TRAVELED HERE ON OWN. THIS ONE IS... CURIOUS.)) It stalked forward, circling the two of them like a wolf. They turned to keep facing it. ((HOW IS IT THAT GREEN ONE HAS NOT MADE MORE PODS? IF GREEN ONE HAS BEEN HERE SO LONG THERE SHOULD BE FEW PLANTS ALREADY.))</p><p>((This one does not wish for all plants to be eaten,)) Sitran retorted. ((These ones need them to live, too,)) she said, gesturing with a wing towards Elena.</p><p>"She's right. Why are you invading like this? We need these things to survive. What you're doing to us is... is... wrong!" It sounded naïve even just to say.</p><p>((OTHER ONES ARE NOT IMPORTANT,)) it said with a dismissive wave of a foreleg. ((THESE ONES WERE GIVEN GREATEST POWER! THESE ONES WERE GIVEN CHOICE AS TO WHAT WORLD STARTS! NOT OTHER ONES!))</p><p>"Greatest power?" she asked. Then understanding dawned on her, and her heart sunk. This wasn't just a moth. This wasn't just a leader. This was... this was a genuine god, standing menacingly before her. "You're Lutra." She looked left and right. They needed to... to what? Fight? Flee? Would Lutra even let them escape? It could move so <em>fast.</em></p><p>Lutra cocked its head curiously to the side. ((HOW IS OTHER ONE KNOWING OF THIS ONE'S NAME?)) It held up a leg. ((ONE OF THESE ONES MUST HAVE EXPLAINED SOME. OTHER ONE IS CORRECT. THIS ONE NAME IS BEING 'LUTRA'.))</p><p>She let out a shaky breath, and her hands trembled on her sword's handle. It seemed so useless to hold onto. She'd already seen what it good it was against the godly insect. Elena clung to some vain hope that maybe she could get Lutra in the eyes, but she'd also seen how mind-numbingly fast the giant insect could move.</p><p>((T-This one,)) Sitran stammered, clearly as shaken as her. ((... this one demands other ones leave this world. Leave it for this one and these ones!))</p><p>It cocked its head, and took a prowling hop forwards. She yelped and Sitran chirped in fright and they stumbled back. ((NO. THESE ONES HUNGER, SO THESE ONES EAT.)) It chirped quietly, almost like it was humming. ((GREEN ONE COULD COME WITH THESE ONES. WINGS MAKE FOR FLYING BETWEEN WORLDS EVEN IN DARK SPACE WITH NO AIR AND BIG DISTANCES.))</p><p>((What would happen to beloved one?)) Sitran demanded.</p><p>Lutra turned a cold look to her, then back to Sitran. ((OTHERS NOT IMPORTANT.))</p><p>((Important to this one!)) Sitran shouted, rearing up and waving her legs furiously. ((Beloved one and others showed this one great kindness. This one cannot let leader one kill this one's world!))</p><p>"Sitran," she said, her breath hitching. "Tell me when." Despite her fears, her doubt, her panic, she kept her sword ready.</p><p>((... on counting to three,)) she heard in her head, and she trusted Sitran to not also tell Lutra. ((One.))</p><p>((THESE ONES WILL NOT LEAVE WORLD BE.))</p><p>((... two.))</p><p>((THIS PLACE HAS PLANTS AND THESE ONES HUNGER. THOSE ONLY THINGS THAT MATTER TO THESE ONES. WHY IS GREEN ONE -))</p><p>((... this one loves you. Three!))</p><p>They charged. Sitran moved first, reaching Lutra. She reared up, ready to drive her serrated leg into Lutra's skull -</p><p>Lutra's eyes <em>ignited.</em> The normal blue color was replaced all at once by a burning white, like one of those special fires that didn't burn wood. A bright orange light erupted from inside Lutra, as though the divine moth had plucked a star out of the sky and eaten that too. Lutra's movements turned into a blur as it slashed -</p><p>Sitran's top half fell onto the ground, and her bottom half fell next to it.</p><p>Elena's gorge rose and her heart stopped. She'd been ready to charge Lutra alongside her love, but now everything ground to a halt as her eyes were drawn to the grisly, unthinkable scene.</p><p>Sitran.</p><p>She was... gone.</p><p>She was just... <em>gone.</em></p><p>Elena didn't even think. She just <em>screamed,</em> charged Lutra blindly, and -</p><p>Pain like nothing she'd ever felt, ever known she <em>could</em> feel, engulfed her mind and drove out all thought. By the time she'd hit the ground the pain was already gone, replaced with the cold, numbing claws of shock. Lutra took flight, and left them behind as though it had just squished a gnat.</p><p>Her vision blurred. She reached out a hand towards Sitran. Shaking, crying, and with the last of her strength, she held on to the tip of one of her legs.</p><p>And as the moths around her continued to swarm and feast, the world went dark.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Only those capable of interstellar space travel had a prayer of escaping them.</strong>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please do leave a comment, let me know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Conservation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I do not own Mythic Ocean. Paralune does.</p><p>Chapter published October 6 2020.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>As long as they accepted, they would find the moths patient and supportive.</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">Histarlin</span>
</p><p>
  <em>RING! RING! RI -</em>
</p><p>She smashed a tentacle down on the alarm, silencing it.</p><p>With a yawn, she woke up and stretched. She reached her arms to the ceiling, the pair of reaving arms on her back out to the sides, and her four long, spindly tentacle legs out as far as she could.</p><p>Ugh. Another day. Couldn't it <em>wait</em>?</p><p>... no, it couldn't.</p><p>With a groan, she got out of her nook in the walls and stood, stretching. She almost headed out the door, but then caught herself. Bathing. Right. She had to get herself cleaned. She took a left and into her chambers' shower. The doors shut behind her automatically, and she spoke up. "Begin morning shower."</p><p>"Beginning morning shower," the gray, cubical room's announcer parroted.</p><p>Then she closed her large, brown eyes and grunted as, from various nozzles embedded in the wall, hot soapy water began to forcefully spray over her. The jets took turns alternating on and off, making sure to get her legs, her stomach, her back, underneath the white bone of her reaving arms, everywhere. Tiles slide aside and spinning brushes emerged on long robotic arms, which she allowed to rub over her smooth, brown scales to clean them off.</p><p>The arms retracted, and new arms emerged. She opened her mouth and let them brush her teeth; first her front row of venom-filled fangs, then her back row of molars.</p><p>"Dry," she commanded. The air around her turned into a whirling, searing cyclone for a few brief seconds, sucking the moisture from her body. She brought up a mirror and spent some time styling the tentacles sprouting from her head back into her favored ponytail, then left the shower.</p><p>Histarlin reached out with a tendril leg, and grabbed her personal computing tablet from where she'd left it lying on the ground from the night before. She brought it in, transferred it into her hands, and sheathed her claws and forearm spikes so she could begin tapping along it.</p><p>It seemed she was, as her alarm had hinted, on the clock today. She was needed on the surface. She had business all the way through to lunch, then a meeting of some kind at dinner. Her assistant would have the rest of the details.</p><p>Her stomach growled. Right, she needed to <em>eat. </em>She could find something on the way there; she didn't keep any food at home, even though she kept telling herself she should.</p><p>Histarlin tucked her tablet under her arm and headed for the door. It slid open automatically, and she crawled out on her long tentacles into the streets of Traka, the capitol of the planet. The city was made of a vast array of smoothly-carved underground tunnels, connecting many individual chambers together not unlike the nests dug by some species of insects. Metal tentacle-holds sprouted from every angle of the tunnels, and even as Histarlin watched, she saw many fellow hevaron using them to clamber around the sides or even the tops of the tunnels. Some of them formed groups to travel, but many others traveled alone.</p><p>She did the latter; once there was nobody too close for comfort she set out, following the sign posts to head higher and higher, closer to the surface of Xarax. There was little to distinguish the landmarks as she climbed. Just a slight rise in the air temperature, slightly colored different signs, and -</p><p>
  <em>Grrrrggggrlll</em>
</p><p>Right, she'd forgotten to eat.</p><p>She took a right and headed into some rinky-dink little diner, with pale blue electric lights lining the floor and ceiling. She had a quick meal of lichen-covered fruits, and paid for it with her generous government salary. She sat and ate in a forgettable chair while forgettable patrons milled around her. The food tasted weird, and swallowing it felt doubly weird, but it made the hollow, sucking sensation in her stomach vanish and be replaced by a refreshing fullness, so she put up with it.</p><p>While there, Histsarlin also drank enough water to drown herself. She got up and left, walking out the open doorway -</p><p>
  <em>Thud</em>
</p><p>- and ran face-first into another hevaron. She hissed and backed off, flicking her reaving arms out to their full length. The stranger did the same, extending his claws to boot. "Why don't you watch where you're going?!" she snarled.</p><p>"How about you open your damn eyes, huh?" he snapped back, lifting a tentacle and pushing her in the chest with it. "People exist outside of your own little high-and-mighty bubble."</p><p>She bristled, making the spines along her forearms stick back up sharply. What was this piece of shit thinking, couldn't he see that she was -</p><p>She deflated. No, of course he couldn't. He had no idea who she was just by looking at her, of course not. So she relaxed her limbs and gritted her fangs together. "Sorry, <em>sir,</em>" she spat, stepping around him.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm sure you are!" he called out after her, shaking his head.</p><p>Well, at least it hadn't descended into a fight. Though she would've loved to put a claw or two through his skull, and would've in the good old days, she had better to do.</p><p>She continued her journey up to the surface. Soon the houses and stores lining the cavern pockets gave way to offices and palatial rises. Then, even further up, to rows upon rows of elevator tubes to make the rest of the journey. With nobody else by her, thank goodness, she pushed her way into one and pressed the button for the surface. The doors shut, and the metal hexagon beneath her began to rise, taking her up and up and <em>up. </em>Her ear-holes popped.</p><p>The door opened and she stepped out, now on the surface of Xarax.</p><p>Immediately around her was the hustle and bustle of countless hevaron workers doing their jobs. She saw them operating heavy construction equipment that levitated metal pillars across wide-open areas, or adjusting glass panes in the massive greenhouse panels above her, or even just hovering in groups over a hologram, poking and prodding and spinning it around. There were moths doing the same jobs, too; they were giant, green-winged, arthropod-esque things that flew as easily through the vacuum of space as through an atmosphere, not that Xarax made much distinction between the two.</p><p>The elevator led to the inside of a massive greenhouse dome, and the moment she stepped forward her tentacles sank into a patch of lichen. The air around her was humid, nearly drizzling. Countless pipes all around her sprayed a fine, barely perceptible mist into the air as they pumped water up from the depths of Xarax's caves. The stuff beneath her legs was grayish-green, heavily leaning towards green, and it seemed to be just... <em>growing</em> everywhere.</p><p>It was warm, too. Unconscionably warm. It made Histarlin snarl and wriggle her legs anxiously. The culprits were obvious; the aforementioned greenhouse encircling this part of the surface, made of neosteel girders and reinforced glass panes to trap incoming light. It encased the area around her in a massive dome, but outside she could see construction going on to expand the greenhouse in slow, steady leapfrogs.</p><p>Outside the greenhouse's dominion were the desolate wastes of Xarax, all stone and craters as far as the eye could see. Beyond the horizon was the tapestry of space, aglow with the blues and reds of the nebula that surrounded the planet. Far above her was their star Oblivon, which was little more than a painfully blue speck of light she couldn't stand to look at for more than a few moments these days. People worked even in that desolate, radiation-scoured environment, with hevaron donning protective suits and moths simply enduring it with their incredible resilience as they worked to expand the greenhouse over Xarax's surface.</p><p><em>Alright, where do I need to go?</em> she thought. She froze, then pulled her tablet out to look it up. Stupid little thing. She didn't like how dependent she was on it for every tiny little detail of her life. But it couldn't be helped. There were places to go, speeches to give, bugs to meet.</p><p>That nobody down in the city might not've recognized her, but the people working up here <em>did. </em>Hevaron scrambled to get out of her way, whispering to each other, while one man strode up to her and dipped his head in greetings. His head-tentacles were let down loosely, reaching to his shoulders, and his large eyes were the same gray as the irradiated rocks outside the greenhouse's reach.</p><p>"Miss Histarlin, welcome. You've got an inspection at section 75-N in just a few minutes, so let's walk and talk."</p><p>"Let's." She began striding towards 75-N, and her assistant fell into step alongside her. Histarlin allowed herself a little smile; maybe she wasn't<em> as</em> dependent on her tablet as she feared.</p><p>"... a review of Alethea's newest nutrient delivery system after that. That shouldn't take up too much time, and after that you're free till dinner. But after that you've got a meeting with Lutra."</p><p>She froze. "Lutra?"</p><p>"Yes. Makeup." He began dabbing some kind of awful brown sludge along her scales, not at all the thin powder that humans and such used. If her shower had made her scales shine, this cream turned them into iridescent pebbles as it slid off her body. Beautiful, but <em>itchy.</em></p><p>"Go back to what you said about Lutra. My calendar said I was to be meeting with a representative of the moth collective over dinner."</p><p>"Yes, and that representative <em>is</em> Lutra itself. It wanted to get a ground's-eye view of the situation on Xarax."</p><p>"Cancel it," she said automatically, her claws threatening to burst from her fingertips. "I <em>cannot</em> handle a meeting with Lutra."</p><p>He shook his head. "Sorry, I can't. Lutra itself insisted. You'll just have to bite the bullet."</p><p>"Damn it," she swore. "Do I at least have anything after that?"</p><p>He shook his head again. "Nothing, the rest of the night is free."</p><p>Histarlin rolled her eyes. "Well at least there's that," she muttered. "Alright, let's get to the inspection. That's not a total waste."</p><p>Section 75-N was relatively close to the borders of the greenhouse, but far enough away that it'd been well established and had been growing food for some months now. She could even recognize some of the food, in its unprocessed forms, as some of the fruits and parts of the salads she liked to eat. Several hevaron technicians were at work here, overseeing the sprinklers and humidifiers and the giant, pole-mounted lights.</p><p>It was fairly routine. Ask some questions from the foreman, run some scans on the infrastructure, run some more scans on the plants being grown. She half-slept through it, because it was all the sort of menial, drivel tasks that she shouldn't have to do. She remembered when they had robots to do all this stuff <em>for</em> them, to maintain all their infrastructure<em> for</em> them and let hevaron work more important tasks like piloting starships, catching and selling slaves, or expanding their once-vast empire. What was she <em>doing</em> here? Why was she sullying her claws with this work?</p><p><em>Because there are no robots,</em> she remembered. <em>There are no slaves, and there is no empire.</em></p><p>The inspection went off without a hitch and, through gritted fangs, she gave the workers congratulations and keep-it-ups before turning around. What was next?</p><p>Right, the nutrient delivery thing the goddess Alethea had devised. It'd gone through Q&amp;A and was just waiting for her to review and sign off on its use on Xarax. She turned to her assistant. "Alright, where's Alethea's tech?"</p><p>He checked his tablet. "It's waiting for you on Supremacy Station. I've already arranged a shuttle for you, it's waiting..." He checked again. "... right this way, ma'am."</p><p>"Right. Supremacy Station." Just the word rankled on her tongue. Supremacy Station. What a gods-damnable insult.</p><p>She followed her assistant away from the sound of drills and constructors, away from the glass panels until they were near the tightly-packed center of the above-ground areas. Sure enough, there was a private shuttle waiting for her, hovering softly in midair by way of four antigravity disks along its bottom, which puttered quietly. It was big enough for twenty of her people, and the rounded top had wide windows to let her sight-see.</p><p>The doors on the left and right opened automatically, unhinging upwards to let Histarlin and her nameless, interchangeable assistant climb in. The rounded seats were made of dark blue plastic, with hooks around the bottom for them to grip with their tentacles. She crawled in first and made herself comfortable, and her assistant closed the seat behind her.</p><p>The windows flickered with static, transforming into screens. On the other side was a moth's face, peering across at her with a curious glint in its disgusting bug eyes. It didn't make any actual sound, but whatever device it was holding on its end picked up on its telepathy and projected it into the shuttle.</p><p>"Hevaron ones in shuttle. Leaving planet. Why?"</p><p>She scowled. Ugh, she'd almost forgotten about <em>this.</em> "I am Administrator Histarlin, on a visit to Supremacy Station to approve what I am to understand is the goddess Alethea's newest in the line of nutrient delivery systems. Afterwards I am to meet with - " She forced down the urge to vomit. " - Lutra over dinner."</p><p>The moth tapped something out of her view with its forelegs, then nodded. "This one sees one named Histarlin is to travel to great ship-made-station. Approval is granted. Good days are wished."</p><p>The transmission ended, and the screens turned back to normal windows. With a thrum the shuttle lifted higher off the ground, and shot forward on autopilot. Histarlin sighed and leaned back in her seat, scraping her reaving arms across the furniture. Her head lolled about and she ended up staring through the window as they traveled. She saw them approach a metal hexagon lodged in the greenhouse, which opened up to reveal an airlock. They shot through with the sort of grace only automation could provide, and soared into space.</p><p>Xarax had little to no atmosphere to speak of, outside the greenhouses, so there was no turbulence as they left the gravity well. Histarlin got a glimpse of her world as they turned towards Supremacy Station; a smooth ball of mottled shades of gray, covered in craters and scoured by radiation. There must've been a billion like it in the galaxy, but it was <em>their</em> world, <em>they'd</em> managed to evolve in its caves against all odds, took to the stars even as the universe itself sought to kill them.</p><p>They should've been the ones who won the war.</p><p>The shuttle coasted through the nebula with ease, maintaining a safe distance from the neutron star that the planet orbited. Xarax receded into the distance, and if she could've magnified her vision she could've seen it the entire trip but, as it was, soon the planet was entirely out of sight.</p><p>They sailed away from Oblivon, off towards deep space, and after a few minutes spent in tense silence with her assistant their destination finally materialized in the distance; Supremacy Station. Once the flagship of their empire's space force, an unbelievably powerful mothership of unrivaled firepower, it'd been deweaponized and repurposed into a station at the edge of their territory, to coordinate travel to and from interstellar space. It was shaped like a great many cubes of salt stuck together in a shape that vaguely resembled a torus, with a ships and service vessels crawling over it like insects. Here and there she saw, fluttering through space, a swarm of moths, as easily at home in vacuum as on a planet.</p><p>Histarlin scowled, baring her fangs at them.</p><p>Sailing smoothly, they approached one of Supremacy's gargantuan docks, embedded into the cubical segments as though a god had come down and scooped a ragged, uneven chunk out of it. Wedged in alongside many other ships, in the design of many other species, they puttered over to a relatively small platform and came to a rest.</p><p>The doors opened automatically, and she was the first out, furiously lashing her reaving arms at the air around her. Her assistant hung well back to avoid being cleaved. Her fingers trembled and each step she took she was ready to lash out with her tentacles and strangle one of the many, shorter aliens around her. Aliens who no doubt made their homes among stars <em>her</em> people used to own.</p><p>"Alright, where's this nutrient system for me to review?" she asked, stopping at an intersection.</p><p>Her assistant tapped along his tablet. "Right this way, miss," he said, turning down a corridor lined with languidly blinking lights. "It's being held in a private conference room."</p><p>They walked through the station, going up elevators and down stairs. They passed all sorts of aliens as they did; squishy humans milling about in groups, avian midarians hopping around, aquatic turlacs clanking around in water-filled suits, and more. The walls faded from an even white into a myriad of other colors, covered in painted mosaics displaying various scenes from different worlds. Not a one from their <em>own</em> world. There were windows, too, oriented towards the vacuum of space. Security teams waited at intersections, and auto-restaurants sat nestled into nooks in the walls, bustling with patrons.</p><p>Eventually the crowds thinned out, the painted walls returned to sterility, and judging by all the stairs they'd gone up they were near the top and middle of the station. She was led to a pair of sealed double-doors which, sensing her presence, slid open to reveal the room with -</p><p>- ugh, there was an <em>alien</em> in there too.</p><p>She looked over the creature first. He was a human man, dressed in a cross between ceremonial garb and a lab coat; dark blue, but wavy and ruffled and designed with yellow circuitboards. Near his waist it blossomed outward like a skirt, or a gown, and its entire surface was littered with little pockets. Pens, pencils, calculators, tablets, chargers, more and more equipment the longer she looked. The human himself was... rather unremarkable. She didn't have the ability to tell them apart very well; his hair was... black? Skin more brownish than usual? Damn it, she was going cross-eyed just looking at him.</p><p>The device resting on the long hovertable in the middle of the room was easier to focus on. It looked, at first glance, like a bunch of old PVC pipes put together into a square and painted blue. But looking closer she could see yellow nozzles on the inside, leading into honeycomb-like ends.</p><p>"Administrator Histarlin," he said as the door closed behind her. "Greetings. I am Father Danora, servant of my Lady Alethea. I am pleased to present to you our latest in the line of scalable nutrient distribution systems, the Aerolizing Atmospheric Condensation Replicator. AACR, or as we call it, Acre."</p><p>"Fascinating," she deadpanned.</p><p>"Would you like a demonstration?" he asked. He reached into one of his innumerable pocket and pulled out a small, black, handheld remote covered in buttons.</p><p>She held up both a hand and a tentacle leg. "I have every confidence that something designed by Alethea - "</p><p>"<em>Lady</em> Alethea."</p><p>She growled and her reaving arms unfolded from her back, their blades of bone <em>schwiniging</em> against each other. Histarlin bared her fangs, and the puny human cowered back under her strained smile. "Yes. <em>Lady</em> Alethea. I have every confidence her invention was tested rigorously and functions perfectly. Simply explain what it is and I can sign off the confirmation."</p><p>He gulped nervously. "R-Right, of course. The Acre model is compatible with all nutrient tanks and systems. It features miniaturized pumps that forces liquid and gas and even paste through the yellow tubes there, where the contents are then aerolized and ejected into the atmosphere. Coverage is extensive and can be modified easily. You can also ch-change location of delivery by just adjusting the tubes."</p><p>"Power?"</p><p>"Self-powered. The blue coating is a solar paint, efficient enough that even the small bits of light Oblivon releases are sufficient for a square this size."</p><p>She smiled, sweetly, but kept her reaving arms open. "I see. Fascinating." She lifted her tablet and waved it. "Send me the approval document."</p><p>"Right away," he said hurriedly, grabbing his own tablet from a pocket further down his robes. He swiped along its surface, and an electronic document appeared on Histarlin's own device.</p><p>She quickly tapped along its surface, signed her name, and then nodded. "Pleasure doing business with you, Father." Without waiting for a response, she turned away and addressed her assistant. "I am free until dinner, yes?"</p><p>He nodded. "You are indeed. The meeting is in the upper repository; would you like me to send you the details and leave you for the day?"</p><p>"Please do." They stepped out of the room and let the door close behind them.</p><p>He swiped from his tablet in her direction, and dipped his head in a bow. "Pleasant day, Miss Histarlin," he said, then began striding away.</p><p>Then she was alone, with nothing left to do but dread the meeting with Lutra. The all-powerful moth who - if its church was to be believed - had created the entire universe, fully formed, in one great act of Last-Thursdayism. The sole, unquestionable leader of the Collective, and every species that belonged to the alliance. Including her own.</p><p>What could it possibly want with her?</p><p>She had a few hours to stew on it, so she figured she may as well wait close to the venue and surf the net in the meantime. Refresh herself on the going-ons outside Oblivon. Fortunately she was still in the relatively empty part of Supremacy Station, and the few people who <em>were</em> here were important and self-absorbed enough to pay her no mind. She found a corner and leaned into it, skimming the news on her tablet.</p><p>Not a lot had happened since yesterday. There was some hubub between the Neo-Religious groups of the northern galactic rim. Vitra and its brood were getting closer to the Somnambu galaxy, and everyone was all excited about the first intergalactic moth expansion. Politicians from the major Collective species getting into disputes, humiliating themselves, playing underhanded games in an attempt to avoid dragging the moths into their problems and getting a harsh reprimand. Moths this, moths that. Moths, moths, moths.</p><p>She meandered around. Got a quick lunch at some out-of-the-way store in the form of a fruit cup. While eating she double-checked the time and place she was set to meet Lutra; an open-dome pavilion near the top of Supremacy Station, far away from the artificial gravity generators that marked its 'bottom'. A high-society restaurant enclosed in a dome of reinforced glass to give the appearance of floating in the vacuum of space. Something that wouldn't have <em>actually</em> been dangerous to her if... if Lutra and the moths had <em>just - !</em></p><p>Histarlin sighed, folding her reaving arms back against her back from where they'd <em>schwung</em> open. It didn't matter.</p><p>It was almost time. Even the station's onboard lights were dimming. Steeling herself, Histarlin made her way there.</p><p>The <em>Supreme View</em> was staffed mostly by hevaron. A few alien waiters moved around inside the restaurant itself, but it was one of her own kind that greeted her at the marble pillars that defined the entryway.</p><p>"Administrator Histarlin," she said simply as she strode up to her. "I have a meeting with..."</p><p>The hostess nodded and checked her tablet. "... with Lutra, yes. Right this way, ma'am." She turned and led Histarlin inside, and she reluctantly followed, her stomach churning and the spikes in her forearms prickling with the urge to unsheathe. They ducked through the entryway and... oh wow.</p><p>Space stretched around her. Stars sparkled in the distance, and the vast darkness was aglow with the light of Oblivon's multicolored nebula. From this vantage point she couldn't see any of the ships coming and going, nor any of the metal space station underneath her. She couldn't even see the glass dome around her. Just darkness in all directions, illuminated by the glowing strips of light beneath her legs. There was a small waterfall in the corner, and a garden in the other.</p><p>Tables made of malleable plastic, designed for all manner of alien physiologies, dotted the area, mostly unoccupied. But she was led away from all of those, to the right, along a narrow path of silver and steel that terminated behind a wall of frosted one-way glass, with sweet-smelling flowers lining the way. The hostess stopped right before it and turned to her. "Enjoy your stay, ma'am."</p><p>"I doubt it," she mused as she was left alone. Histarlin took a deep breath, calmed her nerves, and strode behind the glass.</p><p>It'd been frosted on one side to preserve the nook's privacy, but once she was on the other side it was all but invisible. And there, in the center of the private room, was Lutra.</p><p>Hevaron were tall as far as sapient life went; nearly twice as tall as a human. Moths were even larger, longer than she was tall. And Lutra was the biggest moth of all, a time and a half the size of any of the others. It stood upright on four of its legs, leaving the front two propped on the ground like stilts. The divine moth's wings, broad and blue-green like all of its kind, rested on its back in a way that <em>just</em> nearly hid the bright yellow eyespots on them. Its giant bug-eyes were on her in an instant, and even from so far away she could <em>feel</em> the vast power held within its shell, filling the air with ozone as though lightning had struck.</p><p>"Lutra," she said tightly. "Greetings."</p><p>Its voice came into her head, louder and stronger than any other moths' telepathy. Not quite <em>shouting,</em> but like a bellowing giant had lowered its voice to a whisper so as not to deafen her. ((ADMINISTRATOR ONE ARRIVES. GREETINGS ENSUE. THIS ONE BECKONS ADMINISTRATOR ONE TO SIT AND EAT.))</p><p>"Thank you." Stiffly she walked over to the table and sat down in midair. A seat rose beneath her, and she wrapped her four tentacles around the underside, squeezing tightly.</p><p>Lutra gnashed its mandibles together, looking down at her from where it sat. ((TENSENESS. FEARFULNESS. ADMINISTRATOR ONE HAS NOTHING TO FEAR. THIS ONE WANTED CLOSER VIEW OF HOW XARAX FOOD-GROWING IS.))</p><p>"I see. Well, the greenhouses - "</p><p>It held up a limb. ((FIRST, EATING. SHARING THOUGHTS IS EASIER WITH NO HUNGER THOUGHTS.))</p><p>She nodded. "Very well." Histarlin looked down at the table, where two flaps had slid open to reveal a touchscreen; one for her, and one for Lutra. They ordered food in silence, and soon their meals came hovering in on drones; a salad for her, and a salad for Lutra that seemed to be made of some kind of strange, bulbous purple fronds. She ate carefully and delicately, keeping an eye on the way the moth tore the plants apart and devoured them. Hard to believe, with how easily they could rip flesh from bone, that the moths were herbivores.</p><p>Not that it was <em>too</em> surprising. Hevaron were herbivores, too.</p><p>Once she was done, she washed her meal down with a glass of water and pushed the bowl away, no less tense for having some good food in her. Histarlin crossed her arms, claws quivering in their sheathes. "So. You wanted to know how the greenhouses are going?"</p><p>((CONFIRMATION,)) it said, still feasting. Lutra was on its fifth bowl, and each one was substantially larger than her own, too.</p><p>"They are progressing quite nicely." She tapped along her tablet for last week's reports. "Section 82-A was completed the day before yesterday, putting us at three percent coverage. Brawls are also down ten percent from last quarter."</p><p>It nodded. ((HAPPINESS. SATISFACTION. THIS ONE IS GLAD TO SEE HEVARON VIOLENCE GOING DOWN. BUT.)) Its frond-like antennae, which'd been flowing about as if underwater, curled inward. ((THIS ONE STILL HAS WORRY. THAT THERE IS STILL... RESENTMENT.))</p><p>"Between our people and yours." She sighed, and look around. "You haven't been to Oblivon in a while."</p><p>It tilted its head to the side, compound eyes twinkling brightly. ((BESUMENT. CONFIRMATION. THIS ONE HAS NOT BEEN TO GREAT SHIP-MADE-STATION SINCE WAR.))</p><p><em>The war,</em> she thought. <em>Where you took down Supremacy single-handedly, without breaking a sweat.</em> "It's hard," she said. "Many of us... I'm still not used to this body." She flexed her arms, staring as the muscles tensed, the scaly hide moved, the sinews bent. The soft, fragile meat, the dark blood. Nothing at all like the plastic and metal she'd been used to all her life. "It's usually not so bad, back home. I can stop myself from thinking about it most of the time," she whispered solemnly.</p><p>Lutra nodded. ((THIS ONE REGRETS THAT HARSHNESS WAS NEEDED, BUT HEVARON PUT MORTAL ONES IN DANGER.))</p><p>"I know!" she shouted. Then realization set in; she'd raised her voice to Lutra. Her scales turned to ice and she shrank back. "My... my apologies, Great Lutra. But... it's hard."</p><p>It stared at her. ((THIS ONE... FORGIVES. SADNESS. BUT WHAT WAS EXPECTED OF THESE ONES?))</p><p>Histarlin grimaced. Her stomach churned again, despite all she'd eaten. "I know. And... I can understand most of it. We went against you, and we lost. I can understand forcing us to follow your rules. I can understand confining us to our homeworld. I can understand dismantling our starfleets. I can even understand making Xarax all... lush and overgrown." Her voice tightened and she clenched her fists. "B-But what I can't understand is... is why you did <em>this</em> to us!" she shouted, gesturing to herself.</p><p>Lutra was quiet, and she took that as permission to continue. Not that she could've stopped herself; it'd been roiling around in her ever since that fateful day, building up inside of her like black, putrid filth and now it all came vomiting forth in a geyser as she shook and teared up. "We'd tried so hard to get away from it all and we <em>did!</em> We escaped our flesh, we made those bodies for ourselves and you took them away from us! You made us have to deal with, with being sick, and bleeding, and needing to eat and sleep and drink and you made us get <em>old and die! </em>I-I was going to live forever, i-it was all I'd ever known and you cut me out, you cut us all out, you killed us all! We're still moving around for now but WE ARE DEAD! YOU KILLED ALL OF US!"</p><p>With that, Histarlin collapsed into her seat, arms limp on the table. She felt raw, scoured clean, and it wasn't enough because she wanted to <em>fight,</em> she wanted to <em>kill</em> something, but who? How? The only one here was Lutra and that... that wasn't an option.</p><p>((THIS ONE HAD TO,)) it said at last, quietly. ((HEVARON ONES WERE NOT NATURAL ANYMORE, NO RESPECT GIVEN TO NATURE. WOULD HAVE MADE ALL WORLDS ARTIFICIAL, HOLLOW, THESE ONES AND MORTAL ONES SLAVES. EVEN WITHOUT SHIPS, WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT, WOULD HAVE BEEN SEPARATE AND WOULD HAVE SEEN SELVES AS BETTER AGAIN. AND... THIS ONE ADMITS, IF HEVARON STAYED ARTIFICIAL, WOULD NOT NEED THESE ONES TO PROVIDE FOOD.)) It shook its head. ((NO GOOD ANSWER. BUT HEVARON ONES WOULD NEVER LIVE FOREVER. THINGS END, AND NEW THINGS BEGIN.))</p><p>"We didn't <em>need</em> to end," she muttered, her fury gone and leaving only ashes behind. "We were clever, and strong, and we'd found a way to avoid having to die before you came along and took it from us."</p><p>((DISAGREEMENT,)) it said quietly. ((ALL THINGS END. IF NOT BECAUSE OF THESE ONES, THEN BY OTHERS. WORLD ENDED, BEFORE THIS ONE WAS GIVEN CHOICE.)) It look up at the stars, scanning its many eyes across the heavens. ((THIS ONE THINKS... ALL THINGS WILL END AGAIN SOMEDAY, AND SOME OTHER WILL BE GIVEN CHOICE AGAIN.))</p><p>"That's beyond me," she said bitterly. "That's for you and the gods to worry about. We... <em>I</em> had so much time ahead of me, so much to look forward to, and you took it all away." Histarlin sighed, and got up from her seat. "I need to go before I do something I'll regret. Thank you for the meal, Lutra."</p><p>((THIS ONE ALLOWS...)) Then it seemed to think better of whatever it was about to say. ((THIS ONE WISHES GOOD DAYS TO ADMINISTRATOR ONE. THIS ONE IS SAD BUT UNSURPRISED TO SEE THERE IS STILL MUCH PAIN IN HEVARON.))</p><p>"Thank you," she repeated tensely, already storming away. She pushed past the entrance to the restaurant briskly and, her thoughts a tempest, found a shuttle back to Xarax. Back to her home.</p><p>The ride back, she was numb. She could barely even think about the justifications Lutra had given her. The excuses. None of them would give her back what she'd had, all the time she'd lost. Was this really all Lutra had wanted? A status report on its precious greenhouses and to know that her entire species still hated its kind for what they'd done to them? For how low they'd been brought?</p><p>She wasn't an idiot. She knew they'd been the aggressors.</p><p>... but why had Lutra gone so far?</p><p>By instinct, Histarlin tried to access the web and see how long it'd be before she got home. But of course, she couldn't do that anymore. She needed a tablet to do it <em>for</em> her.</p><p>Her answer, when she bothered to check, was 'not soon enough'.</p><p>She soared through space and landed back on the surface of Xarax, shrouded in greenhouse panels and inflamed with agriculture. Histarlin made her way down through the tunnels, passing more and more of her kind with each step. When she made it back to her flat, carved into the stone tunnels beneath the radiation-blasted surface, she crawled listlessly towards her nook. Then she paused, and walked away from it. She found the nearest window, overlooking Traka city, and stared through it.</p><p>Histarlin sighed, her body going limp. She was tired. She'd gone through her day and had her meeting with Lutra, and shouted her rage at it, and all for what? What good did it do? She just felt so <em>hollow.</em></p><p>Tomorrow was another day. Another day of work, another day of checking up on her subordinates. Another day on the grind. Another day of feeling her body ache with the slightest of exertions, another day of feeling herself being hollowed out by hunger and tiredness. Another day of feeling herself slowly dying. Lutra didn't understand. <em>Couldn't</em> understand, because it was immortal, unaging. She'd been like that, too, from the moment she'd been assembled. Lutra would never know how horrible this was.</p><p>... maybe that was for the best. She wouldn't wish this on anyone.</p><p>Her eyes wandered away from the window and towards the nook she slept in, and the drawers next to it. She reached a tentacle over and, without actually walking towards it, fished out a bottle of pills and dragged it over to her.</p><p>Tomorrow was another day. Another day of drifting through the world, breathing but not <em>living. </em>But... she'd get through it. And the next day, and the next, and the next. What other choice did she have? This was her punishment. Her entire species's punishment.</p><p>Histarlin popped the bottle open, took one of the pills inside, and placed the whole thing back in its place. With the promise of blissful, dreamless sleep, she curled up in her bedding and fell fast asleep.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>If they didn't... they would face Lutra's wrath, and the results would not be pleasant.</strong>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please do leave a comment, let me know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Revelry</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I do not own Mythic Ocean. Paralune does.</p><p>Chapter published December 1 2020.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The activities of those who wanted to wreak havoc and destruction continued.</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">Suma</span>
</p><p>"RAIDERS!" someone shouted.</p><p>He froze up and pushed himself away from his lovers. Mood? <em>Ruined.</em> Everyone in the grove scattered, swimming away in every direction; left, right, up, one poor drunk soul even tried to dig a hole in the bedrock.</p><p>Him? He went, like, due east. He swam as quick as he could, slamming his tailfin up and down and crossing his arms against his body so he was as slick as could be.</p><p>It got pretty dark pretty fast when he was away from the few frondlights they'd gathered for the party, and that made the <em>sounds</em> so much more creepy. There was screaming, and snorting, roaring sharks, and boisterous, ugly jeering from the raiders themselves.</p><p>A chill ran up his spine, and he knew he had to hide. Hide, hide... hide where?! He whipped his head left and right, looking for something, anything!</p><p>
  <em>There!</em>
</p><p>A little crack in the fields of dead, gray coral, just wide enough for him to squeeze through. <em>Sweet! </em>Suma lunged for it, grabbed the lip of the entrance with his upper pair of hands, and hauled himself in. He hissed as the sharp edges of the coral tore across his tail and sliced through the scales, but managed to get in and hide himself underneath the lip.</p><p>He was safe.</p><p>Someone's hand wrapped around his neck and over his head, and he gave a muffled shout.</p><p>"Shh!" he hissed behind him. "Stay down."</p><p>The hand crawled off of him, and Suma glanced back at the other dude. It was pretty dark so it was kinda hard to tell, but his tail was resting on his abs and man, this stranger was <em>ripped. </em>Had a pretty handsome voice too, and from what little color his night vision could make out, a wild head of green hair. Suma shuffled to try and get off of him and <em>ow ow oh man that sucks.</em></p><p>He watched as a dark trace of his blood wafted from the cuts along his tail, and his eyes went wide. Wait. He was bleeding. The Raiders were here. Oh <em>fu -</em></p><p>
  <em>FWOOSH!</em>
</p><p>A shadow passed outside the coral cave he was hunkered in, and he pressed himself lower into the shadows. A woman's voice sounded out, hushed and quiet but deafening with nothing else around.</p><p>"What is it, boy? Smell something?"</p><p>The sound of chomping fangs.</p><p>"Alright." Her voice lifted, scratchy and cruel. "Fan out! Grab anyone trying to get away and bring 'em back!"</p><p>Rushing water as, hopefully, whoever it was went the hell away. Feeling brave, Suma lifted his head over the lip of the cave and peered out. Sharks of all species were flitting about the dim waters, raiders clinging to their backs with nets of loot in their hands. People were screaming, being caught in larger, tougher nets and hauled behind whale sharks. And among them, he saw <em>her.</em></p><p>She rode atop a battle-scarred Great White, with her fiery hair dulled to seaweed green by the water's light-filtering effects. Her skin was deep blue, with patches of scales on her shoulders and her bare stomach, revealed by a tattered and well-worn war outfit that was, nevertheless, more than what most Raiders could boast. She carried a harpoon in one of her left arms, a frondlight torch in the other, and hooked swords in both of her right arms. She rode atop the beast with a fierce, beautiful elegance. There was no doubt that this was the leader of the Raiders herself; Vodain.</p><p>He ducked back down with the other dude. He didn't dare move, dare speak, dare breathe, dare pump his gills. Neither did mystery-cave-dweller-man. But eventually, at long last, one of the Raiders blew a deafening trumpet call - some kind of conch, by the sound of it - and they moved on.</p><p>Suma relaxed and leaned back into the little nook in the coral. "Holy shit." He looked over at the other guy. "Hey man, that was close, huh?"</p><p>"Dude, you know it. So, total bummer, huh?"</p><p>"I know, right?" He held out his left hands and received a double fistbump. "Suma."</p><p>"Volar," the other guy said. "C'mon, let's get out of this cave. I've got a nice bunker not too far, found lots of neat stuff."</p><p>Suma's stomach growled. "Like food, I hope?" he said jokingly.</p><p>"You know it, bro! Let's get going."</p>
<hr/><p>Volar led him out of the crevasse, quickly found a pair of dim, dying frondlights, and handed him one. Together they made their way through the coral reef, past the rising and falling dunes covered in the hard, crusty gray remains. It was deathly silent, with no schools of fish around, and nothing coming from above except dim sunlight.</p><p>As they swam, Volar talked about his bunker. "It's pretty rad. Apparently there's this <em>huge</em> underground cave filled with all kinds of crabs and scallops and, like, kelp. Good eating. Me and my guys have been hanging out there for a minute, you'll fit right in."</p><p>Suma's stomach growled, and he held his lower hands to it. "Sounds gnarly, can't wait!" He could just picture it now; hot crabs cooked on a geothermal vent, wrapped in thick seaweed and slathered with fish fat. <em>Mmm!</em></p><p>"Best part? <em>Totally</em> hidden from the outside. No way you'll find it if you're not lookin' for it! Raiders could be right outside and wouldn't know a damn thing."</p><p>"Sounds like your own personal paradise," Suma said, grinning.</p><p>"Ha, sure is, dude! C'mon, we're coming up on it. Here."</p><p>They came to a flat expanse of the ocean floor, nothing but rippled sand as far as the eye could see. Man, if this was where it was, then Volar wasn't kidding about it being well hidden. He couldn't see anything.</p><p>Drifting closer to the sand, Volar began to sink his hands into it and feel around. "Bedrocks's pretty thick and even, but we found this little cave, yeah? Carved it into a door. Got a hinge and everything." With his huge biceps bulging, Volar heaved and the ocean floor actually <em>upended. </em>Suma startled and swam back a bit as a pretty big chunk of rock swung up, sand spilling off of it. "Here we go! C'mon in, just close it behind you!" Volar vanished into the tunnel.</p><p>"On it!" Suma swam over and took a look. Sure enough, there was a little craggy tunnel sinking beneath the ocean floor, dimly lit with frondlights. He sunk himself in and closed the door behind him; the shifting currents would wash the sand back over it in no time.</p><p>He swam down and came out into an atrium, mouth watering. <em>Buttered crab, here I come!</em></p><p>Suma froze and blinked. Then he gestured with all four hands at the small cave. "Aw c'mon, what's <em>this?</em>" he whined.</p><p>The stones were brownish, like mud. There were a few stalks of kelp rising from the seafloor, but most of their leaves had been torn off and eaten up. In the middle, a bundle of frondlights had been stacked together to provide lighting. There was a cluster of open, empty clam shells stacked high in the corner. Another corner had crab shells. And so on with other corners, loaded with garbage. There were a few larger pieces of stone laid down on the ground as beds, with some hunky guys and hot babes laying on them. But seriously, where was the <em>grub?</em></p><p>Volar shrugged. "Well, 'kay, we might've been here for a while. But there really <em>was</em> a whole bunch of food when we first got here, and it's still super safe, ya know?" At Suma's glare, he backed up and held up his upper pair of palms. "Hey, hey I get it man. Wait right here, lemme scrounge you up something." Volar swam off, leaving Suma alone with the others.</p><p>He awkwardly folded his top arms and let his lower arms dangle. He chewed on his lip. Man, this was lame. Whatever.</p><p>Suma swam over to one of the chicks lounging on her back with her hair drifting around her face. She had bright orange and yellow skin, like a clownfish, kinda had a bit of a baby bump going, and was dozing off but grunted awake when he got near. "Hey there," she said.</p><p>"Uh, hey," he said with an awkward wave. "So, like, what's there to do around here?" Everyone was just sort of... laying around.</p><p>She pointed a finger at him. "Volar just brought you in, bright?" He nodded. "Well, this is just kinda a slow day, ya know? Place gets bigger deeper down, too, this is just, like, where we go to sleep." She sat up on her tail and held out a hand. "Inu."</p><p>He shook her hand. "Suma. Show me what's there to do 'round here? Volar's fixing me up something to eat, apparently."</p><p>"Yeah, c'mon." She heaved herself into water with a grunt. "Down here."</p><p>Suma followed after her as she swam deeper into the cave, through a series of shadowy tunnels he hadn't been able to see at first. More and more paths branched off, left and right and at odd angles. Glancing back at him, she smirked. "Yeah, it can get pretty hard to find your way around, ya'know? You'll get used to it." They arrived in another open cave, lit up the same as before. The water was a bit warmer down here, though.</p><p>"There any geysers down here?" he asked.</p><p>"No black smokers if that's what you're asking," Inu said, swimming down to sit on a rock. "Got some hot spots down here, though. Makes for good bathing. So." She smiled knowingly. "Volar's lush paradise isn't everything you thought it'd be, huh?"</p><p>Suma groaned. "He made it sound like the forests and reefs grandpa always told me about."</p><p>She sighed. "Ya, I know the feel, man. Lured me in with the same bull. But hey, beats hiding from the Raiders, ya know?"</p><p>He found his own rock and laid down on it. His spine went <em>pop-pop-pop-POP</em> as he stretched out. "Tell me about it. At least <em>they</em> can get whatever they want, ya know? Must be nice to be one of them."</p><p>Inu scoffed. "Yeah, but they're not exactly, ya know, taking applications."</p><p>Volar's voice came ringing out from elsewhere. "Grub's on!"</p><p>Suma sat up so fast his spine popped again. "Aw, sweet!"</p>
<hr/><p>The rest of the cave's inhabitants gathered around another antechamber, this one with a crevice that spewed forth boiling water from deep below. They'd hung a stone pot over it, boiling a sludge-like mess of mussels and seaweed that Volar had scrounged up from somewhere in the endless twists and turns. They formed up, took some food in a bowl, then hung around and partied. There were a bunch of kids of all ages, too, playing tag in the tunnels.</p><p>"... so anyway, you'll never believe this," some dude named Ipa said, telling a wicked story about a party over in the ridge he'd been to. "<em>Amar</em> shows up!"</p><p>Everyone <em>ooed.</em> "No way," Suma said. "What were they like? I've never even <em>seen</em> Amar!"</p><p>"I know, right? Super lucky. They're kinda like, an otter or something. Three eyes." He held a thumb to his forehead to show. "All furry and orange. Got a lot of strange markings all over their neck too. <em>Super</em> long, <em>super</em> fluffy tail. And oh man, did they know how to par-tay!"</p><p>Ipa kept telling the story, about all the games and jokes and stories Amar had, and their dance moves, and how fast they could swim.</p><p>"And then, get this. They swim to the middle, put like, two of their hands on the ground." He held up his top pair of hands, palms out. "And the whole place just <em>lights up.</em> The coral turned <em>rainbow</em>, dudes, and there were fish and plants and everything. Oh man." Ipa leaned back and rubbed his abs. "That was some good eating, then. Amar kinda looked worried when we were eating it all, but like, that's why they made all that, isn't it? I dunno, gods are weird."</p><p>"Aww, dude, that sounds sick," Suma said excitedly, and everyone else chimed in. He looked down at his bowl and frowned. "I'm gonna get more grub."</p><p>"Grub's out!" Volar shouted from near the pot. "Sorry guys, nothing left. Gonna go look for some more." Volar began swimming towards a tunnel, and sent everyone finger guns. "Stay chill!" he said, vanishing.</p><p>"Aw, that sucks!" he shouted, throwing the bowl at the nearest wall. The water friction or whatever slowed it down and set the bowl gently on the ground. "I'm gonna go look too," he said, swimming away angrily in another direction.</p><p>This was <em>stupid.</em> Here he thought it'd be a nice little paradise, but this <em>sucked.</em> Like, it wasn't all bad. He got a good place to sleep, and some food he guessed, and a lover under each arm when he went to bed, but he wanted <em>more.</em> He wanted the gourmet piles of food that people kept saying used to be all around, he wanted to know there'd always be more food somewhere for him, he wanted to stop worrying the Raiders were gonna find them and come crashing in.</p><p>He just wanted to stop, like, being <em>worried</em> all the time.</p><p>... worried the Raiders were gonna find them.</p><p>And that was when Suma had a wicked idea.</p><p>Suma began swimming for the top of the caverns. He found the door to the open waters, pried it open, and found himself once more in the open, desolate ocean. He began swimming for his target.</p>
<hr/><p>They were screaming. They were crying.</p><p>Suma turned away and grimaced. Ugh. This <em>blew.</em> He felt like shit. Like, on the <em>inside.</em> And not just cause he was starved.</p><p>The Raiders had come and they were just <em>tearing</em> the underground caves to shreds. One of their whale sharks were here, carrying a net filled with the begging captives, swimming in one places as its handlers guided it. Most of the Raiders were underground, searching for what food was still left. They wouldn't leave until this place was picked clean.</p><p>
  <em>FWOOSH!</em>
</p><p>Suma spun and saw a Great White approaching, its snout bloodied and its hide scarred. Atop it was a Raider who, unlike most of them, wore some type of clothes; a tattered war outfit that left her toned, scaly abs bare. She hopped off the shark and patted its side, prompting it to begin swimming a wide, lazy patrol.</p><p>She was tall, taller than him. Her fiery hair was dulled to green by the immense depth. Her skin was blue, with patches of scales on her joints. In each arm she carried a weapon of some type; a harpoon, a bola, a spear, and a hooked sword.</p><p>"Vodain," he said, super scared all of a sudden. His stomach plunged right to the bottom of his tail. "It is, uh, a pleasure to see you."</p><p>"Yeah yeah. You're the sellout who got us here right?" she asked, checking him out. Suma couldn't help himself from checking her out too; hoo boy, she was hot. <em>Lot</em> of nasty scars, though, and that reminded him that she had a bunch of weapons in her hands. "Not bad," she hummed. "Not bad at all. You've got guts, kid, and you get to keep'em for bringing us this haul."</p><p>Wait. That was it?</p><p>She must've seen something on his face, because she barked a laugh. She had shark teeth. "What, were ya hoping we'd, I dunno, let ya in?"</p><p>"I was at least hoping for, you know, a share of the <em>food.</em> I'm starving." His stomach churned as if to prove it.</p><p>"Yeah, yeah no kidding. You either ride with us or you gotta go picking scraps." She gestured to the side with her head. "Well, or go join up those weird agricultural freaks by the shallows. We were actually gonna go smash them when you showed up. Nice thing, too, we'll be riding into battle with full bellies!" She slapped her stomach to punctuate it. "But yeah. You want the food? You gotta join up. You ready for what that means?"</p><p>It meant all the food he could ever want. It meant getting to be the dangerous dude people hid from, rather than being the guy hiding. It meant long nights partying. It meant he could do what he wanted. It meant <em>freedom. </em>Suma locked eyes with Vodain. "I am."</p><p>She nodded cheekily. "Yeah, well let's see it then." She slung her bola net over her shoulder and brought the newly freed hand to her lips. A sharp whistle sliced through the water, loud enough to startle him. One of the Raiders who'd been overseeing the whale shark and its captives swam over, a wicked sharp spear in his hands. "Bring the kid along," she said, gesturing to him with her harpoon. "We're gonna be doing an induction ceremony. Oh, and that guy who was leading the people here. Whats-his-name. Set him aside."</p><p><em>Set Volar aside?</em> he wondered.</p><p>The Raider saluted. "Right away, Voidan!" He turned to Suma with a fierce look on his face. "Come along, new meat. We're going for a ride."</p>
<hr/><p>It turned out, the Raiders didn't just swim around wherever and whenever without setting down roots. Suma was brought along, forced to ride behind on the Raider's mako shark, long and far with only enough rations to keep them going.</p><p>Day and night they swam until they came to a shallow plateau, with sunlight trickling down from above. There were houses made of stone, with doors and windows on any and all sides; not like it mattered, they could all swim. There was a deep and dark hole near the outskirts, watched over by guards, and he watched as a group of Raiders brought the net full of captives down into the cave. Oh man, he did <em>not </em>want to think about what was going on down there. There were, like, a whole bunch of buildings, probably for all sorts of stuff like holding the Raiders' weapons when they weren't in use. There was nothing alive <em>anywhere</em> around; just stone and sand, off into the horizon.</p><p>The worst part was the pikes ringing the area. With shriveled, rotting heads impaled on them.</p><p>Suma <em>really</em> tried not to look.</p><p>Schools of people began swimming out of the houses, collecting in a huge, chanting group above the middle of the camp. Vodain moved to greet them, dismounting her ride and sending it packing. She held up a scimitar, and the crowd hushed. "My people! We return with a great bounty! Deep beneath the ocean floor, in caves hidden from our eyes and ears, were riches beyond what the rest of the ocean could ever imagine!"</p><p><em>Didn't seem that rich to me,</em> he thought, still on the mako.</p><p>"These riches are <em>ours</em>, by might and right! And we never would have found them, if it weren't for one man! Bring him here!"</p><p><em>Shit, that's me.</em> Before he could even think to swim over there on his own, the Raider he'd been riding with began manhandling him over to Vodain's side, tossing him the last few feet through the water. He looked up at her, then out at the crowd. It was filled with people of all shapes and sizes and colors, and he realized it wasn't just the patterns of their skin and scales, but actual <em>warpaint</em> on their bodies.</p><p>"This man was brought to these riches, and upon beholding them, came and gave their location to us personally! Do we think him deserving of the rite?!"</p><p>The crowd cheered, bellowing their approval at him. It felt so unreal. All he'd done was point to the ocean floor and said <em>'here'</em>.</p><p>"Then bring him out!" Vodain shouted, twisting around to shout it at another trio of Raiders, high above him.</p><p>As they began swimming down, he realized that it wasn't actually a trio of Raiders, but two of them, carrying Volar between them. His hands were bound together with rope, and his mouth was stuffed to silence him. He looked pretty beat up, with like a black eye and a few bruises over his body. And were those missing scales on his tail? <em>Yikes!</em> Volar stared at him with wide, terrified eyes. Suma felt kinda bad about it. But a guy needed to eat, ya know?</p><p>Vodain turned to him, and handed over her scimitar, hilt first. "Take it," she said softly, but with so much authority Suma's hands were around the weapon before he knew it. She pointed at Volar. "You want your place in the Raiders? Show us you can do what needs to be done. People want to stop us from taking what's ours, put limits on what we can and can't take. Say things 'belong' to them, and you need to be able to show them they're full of shit. Kill him."</p><p>Suma and Volar locked eyes. He stammered something, mumbled by his gag, and tried to jostle but the Raiders on either side held firm.</p><p>Suma felt... cold.</p><p>And then he felt <em>hot.</em> He felt nervous. He felt <em>excited.</em></p><p>The sword thrust forward and Volar grunted as it sank right into his chest. Spurts of blood, dark green in the water, began to spill out as the crowd cheered.</p><p>With a heave of effort, Suma gripped the sword and flicked his tail, pulling it out. More blood spilled out as he did, and he couldn't pull his eyes away from the horrible scene as Volar trembled once, twice, and then went still in the water.</p><p>Everyone roared. He could barely even react as Vodain gripped his sword arm and raised it high in triumph. The swarm of people began closing in, shouting excitedly in his face, and he shouted back. Someone took the blood and smeared it as warpaint over his body.</p><p>The crowd closed in further. Suma opened his arms...</p><p>... and embraced his new family.</p><p>The Raiders.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>It was what the people wanted most.</strong>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please do leave a comment, let me know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Responsibility</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I do not own Mythic Ocean. Paralune does.</p>
<p>Chapter published March 29 2021.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>"This is the place you love most."</strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span class="u">Alita</span>
</p>
<p>"And so it was," Father Devin bellowed, standing atop the treestump altar, "that Great Amar ventured to the home of the twin gods, where they wished to play with them again. The gods took turns hiding amidst the brilliant coral, ducking beneath the schools of fish, and seeking each other out. At Great Amar's assurance, the twin gods extended their divine gifts into the environment around them. So it was that the twin gods controlled the bodies and minds of the fish, using them as scouts to locate Great Amar's hiding place among the reef.</p>
<p>Alita smiled from where she sat in the choir benches, her hands clasped together. This was always one of her favorite verses from the Book of Coral.</p>
<p>"... but Great Amar was not pleased, and had not expected the twin gods to subject others to their powers. They scolded the twins, warning them against causing harm to others. But the twins gods did not understand, thinking Great Amar simply wished to rob them of victory by invalidating it. Then so it was that the Historian, when he next met the twin gods, learned of these events, and sided with Great Amar. Together they taught the twins carefulness, and empathy, to be good to nature and to those around them, even if it may make them less likely to achieve victory.</p>
<p>"So too must we remember compassion, to set aside our needs for the needs of others. To remember that all children of the world face their own struggles and come from their own stories, to hear them out before assuming the worst. Be at peace." He flipped the Book of Coral's cover over, shutting it with a heft <em>thump.</em> With that sign, the congregation rose from their seats and began to leave in that sort of disorganized, half-leaving, half-gathering-in-groups-to-talk-with-friends way that a crowd with nowhere pressing to go often moved.</p>
<p>Her choirmates began shuffling towards the great wooden doors, and Father Devin began packing up the materials he'd brought to the altar. Alita began pushing her way towards the gates, chatting excitedly with her friends. Once outside, the light of the sun shone down on her, and a chorus of distant birds met her ears, bringing a smile to her face. The people were already going there separate ways into the dense jungle surrounding the temple, and with a wave to her friends, Alita began making her way to the back of the place.</p>
<p>The Temple of Amar was a great structure carved into a still-growing tree, broad and strong and as tall as the mountains, with a leafy canopy thick enough to provide shelter from any inclement weather. Its bark was like molten amber and as smooth as glass, with great windows and doors carved into it. The vast shadow cast by the tree's leaves kept anything from growing nearby except for a thick carpet of verdant moss, and kept the dense jungles at bay. As Alita walked around to the back of the tree, a hop and a skip in her jump, she kept her eyes on the sky, looking for her partner.</p>
<p>... <em>there!</em></p>
<p>She spotted a shadow against the crisp blue skies, diving in and out of the wispy clouds dotting it. The shadow came closer and closer, fluttering its wings fiercely as it came to touch down gently on the moss beds.</p>
<p>"Hey there, Aonyx!" she said, shielding her face with an arm as its wingflaps kicked up dust into her face.</p>
<p>((This one greets partnered one!)) it said into her mind, with a deep rumbling voice. ((Was meeting of talking of furry god enjoyable?)) With a rustle, Aonyx set its wings onto its back.</p>
<p>"It was, thanks! Come on, let's get going." Aonyx lowered itself closer to the ground, and Alita jumped up onto its thorax. She grabbed fistfuls of its soft fur and pulled herself up and onto the saddle strapped around its body; it never minded her pulling the fur. Lutra's brood was tough. "Hear anything on the way here?" she asked, tying herself onto the saddle so she wouldn't fall off.</p>
<p>((This one heard nothing of interest,)) it said. ((Maybe more at meeting place. Anticipation.))</p>
<p>"Sounds like a plan." She leaned over and scratched Aonyx under its head, right at the crease between two of its shell plates. It felt like dragging her nails across a piece of pottery, but it leaned into her touch, chirping in a high pitch that was <em>decidedly</em> at odds with the deepness of its telepathy, and two of its right legs even began thumping against the ground. "Let's go!" she said, pulling away.</p>
<p>((Agreement!)) With that, Aonyx opened its wings up and took to the sky, fluttering them incredibly fast on either side of her. Alita huddled down, pressing herself flat against its body as it climbed into the air, up and up as it made circles around the Temple of Amar's tree to build up speed and height.</p>
<p>Once they were high enough to clear the rainforest's canopy, Aonyx took off and soared due south-by-southeast, and now that they weren't accelerating Alita could sit up and look around. It was the same wondrous flight as ever; the wind in her hair, the world hand-crafted by Great Amar all around them, the vast blue sky above.</p>
<p>The rainforest of the world spread off into the vast distance, but it was not so elsewhere. In her travels Alita had seen vast grasslands insulated by the forests, with great roaming beasts that would reach up to pluck the leaves from incredible heights. She'd seen rivers empty out into glistening, jewel-like oceans. All those things and more over the years; she smiled at the memories.</p>
<p>Aonyx continued to soar at incredible speed, sometimes playfully dipping down to the top of the canopy. They scared birds out of their perches, and if she looked behind her, Alita could see the rainbows of plumage taking off into the air.</p>
<p>Before too much longer they came across their destination, one of the stations of the Worldguard. Standing up from the treetops atop gleaming metal alloys was something like a plate hovering above the trees and casting a vast shadow, loaded with smaller buildings on it that she knew from personal experience ranged from armories, to billboards, to some of the goddess Alethea's new 'communications device'-es that were not much more than little rectangles she could hold in her hand.</p>
<p>They circled it a few times to burn off Aonyx's speed, and then he came in for a landing on one of the moth pads. With a flutter of his wings he came to a rest on the circular patch of moss. ((This one will wait for partnered one,)) it said, lowering itself and starting to rip up patches of moss to devour.</p>
<p>"I'll try not to take long," she said, getting herself out of the saddle and jumping from its side. She hit the ground with a grunt, brushed herself off, and walked off the pad.</p>
<p>All around her were other members of the Worldguard, some just arriving and still in civilian clothes like her, others fully dressed in their leather armor, with weapons strapped to their backs or in holsters along their belts. She greeted them as she walked by to the lockers, a smile on her face, and they greeted her back.</p>
<p>"Hey Alita!"</p>
<p>"Hey there."</p>
<p>"Nice to see you, Alita."</p>
<p>"Greetings, Alita."</p>
<p>Even one of the other moths resting on the platform greeted her. ((This one gives greetings.))</p>
<p>The lockers were arranged near the outer edge of the platform, taking up a good quarter of its perimeter. There were no doors to open to get there, no roof, just a couple of guards and cameras keeping watch to prevent theft. Honestly, who would have the <em>nerve</em> to try and steal from Great Amar's Worldguard?</p>
<p>She found her gear, and searched through for what she'd need for her next mission. She'd spent months memorizing the details, pouring over the evidence, the law, so she knew standard armor wasn't going to cut it. Instead she opted for a camouflage outfit, with some basic survival tools stowed in a bag. Alita quickly got changed, then headed back out.</p>
<p>With that done, she made tracks back for Aonyx's location, this time with heavier steps. She'd dressed to the nines in camo, and even her hat could be pulled down into a mask. On her back she carried a backpack of survival equipment; enough to keep her alive in the wilderness, but not so much that it'd weigh her down and draw attention. She also had one of those new, fancy 'tablets' in her hands. Her moth'd finished eating while she was getting her things, and now was fanning its wings out, opening and closing them rhythmically to absorb the sun's warmth.</p>
<p>"All set!" she called out.</p>
<p>Aonyx snapped its head to her. ((Understanding. This one takes partnered one now?))</p>
<p>"Yep! We're heading to..." She glanced down at her tablet. She had to squint a bit to bring the words into focus, because it was made of clear glass and her eyes kept wanting to look behind it. "... the greater Ambersnap River. Coordinates, uh..." She found them, and rattled them off. "Does that make any sense to you?"</p>
<p>((This one understands, this one knows where!)) Aonyx got up and did a happy little dance on its legs, then folded its wings down in preparation to let her mount it. She hopped up, a little less steadily thanks to the added weight she carried, and once she was properly in the saddle, Aonyx began flapping its wings. ((This one goes now!)) It took off, soaring into the air, angled towards where they were to go, and shot off like an arrow.</p>
<hr/>
<p>A journey that would have taken her weeks, even months, of hiking took Aonyx mere hours.</p>
<p>They soared away from the sun, such that by the time Aonyx descended onto the treetops and landed in the canopy, it was sundown. With its legs perched precariously on several branches, and the tree bending underneath the weight of the giant moth, Alita leaned over and gave it another scratch. "Alright, this is as far as you go. Don't want them seeing you."</p>
<p>It nodded. ((Understanding. Worry. Partnered one alone... unfavorable. Partnered one will be careful?))</p>
<p>"<em>Very</em> careful," she promised, already unhooking herself and looking around for a branch to leap to. "I can take care of myself, Aonee."</p>
<p>((This one leaves then. Returns when partnered one gives signal.)) With that, Aonyx fluttered its wings, took off into the air, and zipped away towards the sunset.</p>
<p>Alright, time to climb down. One foot... there. Another one... there. Good.</p>
<p>As Alita made her way down the giant rainforest tree, she reviewed her mission. The Worldguard had been keeping track of an organization researching the science of life, but their level of secrecy was... suspicious. As was how they kept moving from one place to another, and how species always seemed to go endangered or - Great Amar forbid - <em>extinct</em> in the places they'd just been. Alita's job was to investigate, and then report back her findings. Personally, she was confident she knew what was going on already; they were robbing plants and animals out of the environment and killing them in their experiments, in great numbers too. It seemed obvious.</p>
<p>But 'seeming obvious' wasn't proof, so that was how she ended up climbing down a tree and plopping onto the forest floor. Birds and bugs chirped and buzzed in the understory above her, and already, sweat pooled on her skin.</p>
<p>Great Amar, was it ever humid in the thick of it. Good thing she had supplies enough to not worry about water. Alright, where to?</p>
<p>Alita slung her pack off and held it in one hand - didn't want to drop it on the ground and have to brush the bugs off, no siree! - and found her compass inside. She stashed her tablet while she was at it, got her bearings, and headed off to the north.</p>
<p>Walking through the forest floor was rough. She had to avoid roots sticking up from the ground, as well as sharp rocks, in addition to the wildlife. There was no shortage of foul-tempered, poisonous, venomous, territorial little bugs and snakes and lizards living in the ground, and she had to keep a sharp eye out for their dwellings. The ground sloped up and down as it pleased, forcing her to either trudge upwards or carefully descend downwards.</p>
<p>It'd already been sunset when she arrived, so it wasn't long before nightfall, and moving at night was a terrible idea. So, with a cavernous stomach and with sweat pouring down her face, Alita made camp. Except her 'camp' was little more than a little raised platform on sticks, and a nearly skin-tight sleeping bag that would keep anything from crawling over her, while also keeping her warm and letting in fresh air.</p>
<p>Before she knew it, it was day. Time to get moving.</p>
<p>Alita broke camp, got her spear, and ran through one of the big centipedes crawling on the bark of a nearby tree. Breakfast. She found a puddle of muddy water too, and with her filter-straw, that was her waterskins refilled and then some.</p>
<p>The next few days went like that; marching forward, watching her step, eating and drinking what the land provided and sheltering at night to avoid <em>being</em> what the land provided to someone else, all while keeping an eye out for any disturbance. Using her tablet, she found a journal 'app' and kept records of what species she found. So far everything was okay, but she knew it wouldn't stay that way as she ventured close to the where the organization - Biocord - had made camp.</p>
<p>But she wasn't down! She loved this. Hiking out in the middle of nowhere, practicing her outdoorsmanship, fulfilling her duty to the Worldguard and keeping her skills trained. Even when her muscles burned with fatigue and the urge to sleep weighed on her like a ton of stone, she pressed on with a smile on her face. If she wasn't technically trying to be stealthy, Alita would've whistled.</p>
<p>After a week of hiking, she came across the greater Ambersnap River. The forest cleared away as she approached it, leaving her walking on unsteady rocks piled on top of one another in place of dirt or even a beach of sand. The water flowed at a brisk pace, not quite frothing but fast enough she could see the ways the waves distorted the light bumping off them, rising and falling in different places depending on what kind of rocks or logs were beneath the surface. It was amazingly wide, and it flowed from horizon to horizon.</p>
<p>Well, good a place as any to take a break. She'd have to swim across that, and she needed to get herself in a good frame of mind.</p>
<p>
  <em>Splash!</em>
</p>
<p>She looked up with a smile, expecting to see some kind of bird coming in for a meal, or a fish hitting its tail against the surface. For a moment there was nothing, just a dark shadow underneath the river's wild surface.</p>
<p>
  <em>Splash!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Splash!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>SPLOOSH!</em>
</p>
<p>The water exploded into white froth as the dark shadow burst free, sailed into the air, did a spin midair, and came down onto the ground.</p>
<p>Alita's heart skipped a beat.</p>
<p>It was Great Amar. It was <em>Great Amar!</em> The god who had created the world! Who she had given prayers not a week ago! They were there, <em>right</em> there, standing on six legs and low to the ground like an otter, with their long and furry tail dragging on the stones without the slightest worry of being cut open, shaking their head left and right like a dog to fling water off.</p>
<p>"Whoo!" they said, startling Alita out of her reverie. "Hey there, friend! Sorry if I spooked you." They smiled, showing two nubby fangs. All three of Great Amar's eyes were upturned happily. "Was just in the area, saw you coming, thought I'd say hi." Amar brought their hind legs forward and sat up; she'd been a little taller than the god when they were on all fours - all sixes? - but sitting up made them tower over her. And that wasn't even factoring in the tail.</p>
<p>"Uuuuuhhhhhhhhh," she droned, starstruck.</p>
<p>Their eyes widened. "Oh! Right, it's happening to her." Great Amar lowered themselves to the ground, scurried closer, than raised themselves to Alita's eye level, so close they dominated her entire field of view. "Hello?" They waved a paw in front of her, where the orange fur faded to purple. She could make out every strand of the triangle-pattern around their neck. "Anybody home? Come on, it's me, Amar." They rolled their eyes. "Creator of the world, yada yada, all that stuff. No big deal. Hey, what's your name?"</p>
<p>Her lips moved. Alita didn't remember making them move, and she didn't remember making noise. But she still heard herself say, "Alita."</p>
<p>"Alita! Hey, nice to meet you, friend. Can we, uh, not do the whole 'amazed by being around Amar' thing? I mean don't get me wrong." They stuck out their tongue like a goofy child. "I <em>am</em> a pretty great crabber and all, but giving me the whole godly treatment just makes things weird, you know?"</p>
<p>"It's pretty weird for me too," she said in a daze.</p>
<p>Great Amar must've heard the weakness in her voice, because they frowned and waved another paw in front of her eyes. "Hello? Uh, okay." They reached out and -</p>
<p>"Ah!" she yelped as something sharp poked into her shoulder. On reflex she dodged backwards and to the side, arms coming up to guard her face, but then caught herself.</p>
<p>Alita shook herself. Great Amar had just poked her with their claw. Right. Right. Calm down. They said she was making things weird, right? Don't make things weird. "Sorry I made things weird," she said.</p>
<p>"Ha!" they said. "It's all good. Alita, right?" They followed to where she jumped and held out a paw - one of the middle pair of arms. "I'm Amar." They smiled cheekily. "But something tells me you already knew that, huh? Huh?"</p>
<p>"Uh, yeah." She laughed nervously. "Sorry about that. It's just." She gestured to them. "You know."</p>
<p><em>I'm leaving Great Amar hanging,</em> she realized, and made to shake their paw. The fur was wet, oily even, like all the water Great Amar'd been swimming through had come right out of the river with them.</p>
<p>They nodded sagely. "Ha, yeah, I know. Anyway, it's nice to meet you, Alita. What brings you here?"</p>
<p>"I'm, uh, with the Worldguard." She gestured to her camo. "I'm here to look into what Biocord's up to."</p>
<p>Great Amar let go of her hand, found an especially large rock on the shore, and quickly padded to it. They curled up on the rock, raised their head with their forelegs, and looked to her. "Biocord, huh? Think I've heard of it." They looked off into the sky, then back at her. "Eh, I'm sure it'll come to me. What do you think they've been up to?"</p>
<p>"We don't have any proof yet, I'm here to get proof, but we think they've been experimenting on the local wildlife," she explained. "Any place Biocord leaves ends up suspiciously... barren."</p>
<p>Great Amar's eyes had been twinkling. They'd been full of humor and life and friendliness, and Alita hadn't noticed at all until their brows narrowed and that twinkle darkened. "Oh. I, uh, I see. Well, that's no good." They winked, mirth returning. "Then it's a good thing Captain Alita is on the case, right?"</p>
<p>"Um, sergeant," she corrected.</p>
<p>"Oh, sorry. Anyway, which way're you headed?"</p>
<p>She pointed to the river. "Right across here, actually. I just need to get my wetsuit on."</p>
<p>Great Amar gave her a thumbs up with, uh, with their top-right hand and middle-left. Alita found her eyes zig-zagging across their body to try and keep up with their body language. "Well, don't let me stop you! I'm just gonna bask a bit." They lowered their head onto the hot, sunbaked stone they'd climbed onto, then rolled over onto their back. "Ooooh yeah, there we go..." they groaned, eyes rolling up in bliss.</p>
<p>Well, as long as Great Amar wasn't looking. Alita quickly changed out of her sweaty camo outfit, and then into her solid black wetsuit. She put her old outfit into her bag, zipped it up tight so it was waterproof, and made for the river as the <em>creator of the entire fucking universe</em> sunbathed behind her.</p>
<p>Up close, the river was flowing quite a bit faster than it'd seemed from afar. She'd probably get swept downstream more than she'd thought. Oh well; she'd just have to do some extra walking once she was on the other side. Alita took a step in, feeling the cool water pouring around her toes. Better get in quick before the sun broiled her.</p>
<p>Another step, up to her knees. Another, her stomach.</p>
<p>"Actually, hey!" She whipped around to see Great Amar getting off the rock. "Mind if I tag along? If they're messing with nature, then it's kind of something I have to deal with. Lutra and I made the Worldguard to help me do this kind of stuff, not do it for me."</p>
<p>Before she knew it, Great Amar was wading into the river, the rushing water surging around them. "Well, if you insist. I mean, I'd definitely feel safer with you there."</p>
<p>The god was already next to her, up to their undercarriage in water, but Great Amar still gave her another thumbs-up. "Cool! See you on the other side, Alita!" Then they darted under the water and, just like that, all she could see was a dark shape swimming to the other side.</p>
<p>She stared at where they'd been, then at the far side where Great Amar was <em>already</em> getting out of the water, then shook herself. "Get a hold of yourself, Alita. You're a professional." Taking a deep breath, she began swimming across.</p>
<p>It was <em>impossible</em> to see underneath; even though the water had seemed clear from up top, the current had kicked up enough mud and sand to completely cloud it just a few feet in front of her. Alita stayed on the surface, breaststroking her way across. Occasionally she stopped and looked around to make sure the current wasn't pushing her towards a log or something equally awful. She <em>was</em> getting pushed pretty fast though, if the receding orange blob of Great Amar was anything to go by.</p>
<p>In the sun, it was hot. The rainforest was humid and every step of her hike had forced her to take overheating and dehydration into account. But even with a pure black wetsuit to absorb the rays, in the water she was downright freezing, and it felt like the river was sucking the heat out of her core. She didn't dawdle.</p>
<p>Before she knew it, she was on the other side. When the water grew shallow enough she gingerly touched her feet to the ground, and walked the rest of the way. On the riverbanks, she turned to check how far she'd been carried by the current, only to see Great Amar had vanished.</p>
<p>
  <em>Splash!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Splash!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>SPLOOSH!</em>
</p>
<p>... and there was Great Amar bursting out of the river next to her. "Hey, that was pretty good!" they said, up on two legs. "You're a pretty good swimmer. Well, for a mortal!" they said, winking playfully.</p>
<p>"Ha ha," she laughed nervously. "Thank you, Gr - " <em>Don't call them Great, they just said not to make things weird.</em> " - err, thanks, Amar. Let me get changed," she said, slinging her pack off onto the ground.</p>
<p>"Go ahead!" they said, turning straight away.</p>
<p>Alita changed quickly out of her wetsuit and back into her camo, panting heavily at the strain in her muscles. "Alright, I'm done." Great Amar turned back to face her. "You're, uh, sure you wish to tag along?"</p>
<p>"Mmhmm!" they said, nodding. "I mean, what'm I gonna do, just sit around and let you do all the work? Lead the way, <em>Sergeant</em> Alita," they said, gesturing to the forest.</p>
<p>She nodded. "Alright, thank you very much." She turned to the overgrowth, and set out.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Great Amar was very obviously more at home underwater, if she looked at them. For goodness' sake, they looked like a giant otter. But it became very clear, very quick, that Great Amar was just as capable on land. They clambered along the trees like a gecko and jumped from one to the other like a squirrel, sometimes jumping ahead of her and hanging upside down from the tree branches like a goofball. It always made her crack a smile.</p>
<p>They always seemed to know where every single living thing around them was, too.</p>
<p>"Oh! Burrowing spider."</p>
<p>"Hey, Alita, pit viper over there!"</p>
<p>"Hang on there, don't step on that!"</p>
<p>They continued the hike in ease, until the sun began to set and the forest plunged into darkness.</p>
<p>"Excuse me, Amar!" she shouted. They were currently on a raised boulder ahead of her, on all fours - all sixes? She still hadn't figured out what to call it - and turned their head back to look at her. "I need to make camp for the night."</p>
<p>"Oh, cool!" They jumped off, and padded back to her. "Anything I can do to help?"</p>
<p>She was already setting up her raised platform. "Well, I just need a quick dinner and - "</p>
<p>Great Amar raised a paw. "Say no more!"</p>
<p>
  <em>WHOOSH!</em>
</p>
<p>She'd thought Great Amar could move fast before, but <em>this</em> was outright supernatural. One moment Great Amar was there, the next there was a long, blurry orange trail vanishing into the depths of the rainforest, and the wind sent fallen leaves blowing over her face.</p>
<p>
  <em>WHOOSH!</em>
</p>
<p>And in the time it took her to notice how fast they'd moved, they were back already, down on all fours with an entire dead Tapir hanging from their jaws. "Mweh!" they said, dropping it onto the ground. "Alright, dinner, here you go!"</p>
<p>Alita blinked. "H-How'd - how did you move so - " she said, pointing a finger at Great Amar, before drooping it. "Actually, never mind. Kind of obvious."</p>
<p>"Ha! Yeah, I don't like to really show off about the whole, ya know." Great Amar sat, curling their long bushy tail around themselves for a cushion. "God thing. I don't really <em>feel</em> like a god, is the deal. For the longest time I didn't actually know I was one. Just." They shrugged. "Just, ya know, good at hunting." They smiled. "Heh, must be why the whole 'great creator' thing weirds me out so much."</p>
<p>"Um, yeah, I can see why that would be strange to hear so much of." She inspected the god closer. She'd never seen Great Amar before in her life. She always thought she'd be able to sort of... <em>sense</em> their godliness, the vast power of creation they held. Static along her hairs, or a weight in the air, but there was nothing. If it hadn't been for that display of speed, she'd never suspect a thing.</p>
<p>Her eyes dropped down to the tapir. The rhino-pig-thing had a bite mark on its stomach, and Great Amar had apparently killed it by snapping its neck. Poor critter probably didn't even feel a thing. But, there was one small problem. "Amar, not to be ungrateful, but I can't make a fire this close to Biocord. They'll see the smoke. And I can't eat this raw."</p>
<p>"Ah, ah, not a problem!" they said, lifting their two top paws. "I am not only an <em>amazing</em> swimmer and host, but I am also... a chef! Watch!" Great Amar brought their paws together and closed all three of their eyes.</p>
<p><em>Oh crap,</em> she thought as something began to happen. <em>There's the static, there's the weight.</em></p>
<p>Great Amar spread their arms apart, and where they did a great roiling orb of pure magic appeared, growing larger and larger until it was large enough to fit between Great Amar's paws fully outstretched. It shone its roaring pinkish-orange light on her like a campfire, and when Great Amar opened their eyes, they were a bright, burning-magnesium white.</p>
<p>
  <em>Fwoosh!</em>
</p>
<p>From the orb, a channel of pure magic shot out at the speed of light, engulfing the tapir. It didn't even take an instant. It was skinned, it was cooked, it was sliced up into chunks and set on plates carved out of limestone.</p>
<p>The enormous orb of magic faded, collapsing inwards into a point and vanishing entirely. Great Amar's eyes returned to normal. The great, mystical aura surrounding them vanished. "Ta-dah!"</p>
<p>Alita's eyes were wide. "Uh."</p>
<p>She looked down at the cooked food. It smelled delicious.</p>
<p>She looked back up at Great Amar.</p>
<p>
  <em>Don't make things weird.</em>
</p>
<p>"Thank you," she said. She lifted a haunch to her mouth.</p>
<p>Great Amar watched her intently, smiling eagerly.</p>
<p>She took a bite. It was delicious.</p>
<p>"Well?" they asked, leaning forward.</p>
<p>"It's amazing," she said, chewing and swallowing. She took another bite. It was so warm, as if it'd been cooking over a fire for hours, and as soft too. It was melting in her mouth. "Sorry if it's obvious, but when did you learn to cook like this? Or is it just the... whatever that was?"</p>
<p>"Oh, I actually learned it from you guys! Mortals, I mean!" Great Amar said, clapping with a pair of arms. "I actually didn't know about cooking back in the kelp forest. I mean, sometimes the twins talked about missing 'home cooked meals', whatever that meant, but I didn't really think anything about it." They shrugged. "What can I say? Kind of hard to start a fire underwater."</p>
<p>"Well, you're definitely a quick learner." She continued devouring for a while, then looked up at Great Amar, who'd turned to look at something in the trees. Maybe a bird she couldn't make out. "Um, should I... wait for you to eat?"</p>
<p>"Huh?" They turned to her. "Oh, right. I'll just get myself some mussels."</p>
<p>
  <em>WHOOSH!</em>
</p>
<p>They were gone.</p>
<p>
  <em>WHOOSH!</em>
</p>
<p>They were back, this time with a bunch of black, freshwater mussels in their arms. "Good thinking, Sergeant!" they said, laying down onto their back and starting to crack them open one by one before slurping up the meat inside.</p>
<p>Alita stared, then shook her head, smiled, and turned back to her food.</p>
<hr/>
<p>"Can you make yourself less noticeable?" she whispered to Amar. "You kind of stand out."</p>
<p>"Huh?" They looked down at themselves, bright orange against the dark rainforest. "Oh, yeah, hang on." That same godly aura of power filled the air, and Amar's eyes burned bright. A ripple of energy washed over their body, changing the color of their dense, perpetually wet fur to a moss green. The aura faded, leaving Amar entirely disguised. "How do I look?" they asked, raising a paw and turning it over in their sight.</p>
<p>"Like the jungle," she said. "Alright, let's go."</p>
<p>"Lead the way, Sergeant! Your mission."</p>
<p>She began creeping forward towards the base. They'd come across Biocord's location early in the morning, and now it was time for her camo to come into use. Her mission was simple; get in, get any evidence of environmental destruction, get out. Even if worst came to worst, she wasn't necessarily afraid for herself, not with Amar there. But if they were discovered, it could mean destroyed evidence.</p>
<p>The trees thinned out as they approached, opening into a grassy meadow dotted with thin, yellowing weeds. The Biocord camp wasn't any sort of great cement structure, but neither was it just a loose collection of tents with its employees going about their business in the open. A large log structure occupied the meadow, much too large to be a mere cabin, and strange generators hung just outside of its walls and doors, rattling and belching a strange, foul-smelling smoke into the air. There were a few doors leading into the place, and they all looked to have bolted locks.</p>
<p>That was fine. They didn't need to get inside.</p>
<p>"See anything?" she whispered.</p>
<p>Amar raised their head and took a few deep breaths through their large, broad nostrils. "Yeah, hang on, over here." Amar scurried across the perimeter of the meadow, their long tail waving up and down but never actually touching the ground, and she followed. They went around until they were at the back of the building. There, they hunkered behind a rotting log and peered closer.</p>
<p>Alita gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth in horror.</p>
<p>It was a grave. A mass grave, for all kinds of animals. A giant pit dug into the soil, and she could see bodies of all sorts of wildlife creatures rotting in the sun. Birds, snakes, beetles, butterflies. Next to the hole was a mound of dirt, no doubt awaiting the time when it would be packed back over the hole to hide all evidence.</p>
<p>She stared. Amar stared, too. They stared at the hole quietly, smile gone, their entire body frozen.</p>
<p>"Someone's coming," they whispered.</p>
<p>In a flash, Alita had gotten her tablet out. Evidence. She needed evidence. She held the tablet over their rotting log and took picture after picture of the grave. Then, when she heard footsteps in the brush, she found the approaching men and women and took their pictures too. Them, and the large white cloth box with various tranquilized animals in it.</p>
<p>They went inside. Minutes passed. The back door opened and she got pictures of them dumping fresh corpses into the hole.</p>
<p>Once done, she and Amar huddled back behind the log. "Alright, I've got the evidence," she whispered. "This... this is too much. It's proof that they're behind the damage being recorded. They can't hide behind the excuse of it being a coincidence." She glanced at her bag. There was a flare inside, a high-powered one that would go far into the air. "I can call my partner, Aonyx, here. We can get back to - "</p>
<p>"Well, uh, can I stop you there, friend?" Amar said, glancing up at her. "That's, uh, not really gonna be needed. I think I've seen enough." And then they came out from behind the log and started to approach Biocord's building, padding along on all six legs. Amar's body rippled with magic, dispelling their camouflaged fur and turning back to the regular bright orange.</p>
<p>Her eyes widened. "Whoa whoa whoa, what are you doing?" she hissed, following after the god.</p>
<p>They shrugged, but did not stop walking. "Well, I set up the Worldguard to stop this sort of thing, right? I mean, I'm <em>here</em>, so you don't need to bring those pictures back, ya know? It's never good to overcomplicate things, friend!"</p>
<p>"Well, I suppose, but - "</p>
<p>"Glad you agree!" Amar reached the back door and got up on two legs. They investigated the lock. "Let me see, how does..." They grasped the handle, pulled it down, and <em>pushed.</em> The door opened inwards with such a loud crack that Alita was certain that Amar had just broken the lock like it was nothing. "Hey, look at that, it was open!" they said with a smile, and then Amar was inside.</p>
<p>"Crap," she whispered, hurrying after them. "Wait! Shouldn't we call for backup if we're going in like this?"</p>
<p>"Eh, what for? I don't wanna drag too many people into this. Here, I'll get that." Once she was in, Amar closed the door behind her.</p>
<p>The inside of the building was refreshingly cool, making the sweat on her skin prickle icily. Electric lamps hung from the ceiling, glowing yellow. And a pair of guards, armed with crossbows and clad in some strange, dark armor that looked like some sort of plastic, turned the corner and spotted them immediately.</p>
<p>"Freeze!" the man on the left shouted, taking aim. "Intruders, sound the... sound the..." He seemed to notice who they were aiming at.</p>
<p>The woman on the right swallowed nervously and lowered her weapon. "... oh no."</p>
<p>"Hey there, friends!" Amar said, waving one of their upper paws. "Mind taking me to whoever's in charge around here?"</p>
<p>They stared up at Amar nervously. Their eyes flickered back to Alita, and she shuffled awkwardly. Should she... go? Amar certainly didn't need her here, did they? What did she do in this situation?</p>
<p>Whatever <em>she</em> should do, the guards obviously decided the smart thing to do was do what Amar said. "Right this way, G-Great Amar," the man said, gesturing down the hall with a trembling hand. "Should I let him know you're coming?"</p>
<p>"Oh, could you? That'd be great!"</p>
<p>"I'll run on ahead!" the woman volunteered suddenly, before bolting.</p>
<p>The three of them - Alita, guard, and Amar - sat in silence for a moment. Amar chuckled, looking to the side nervously. "Heh. Man, this is awkward, huh? Sorry about this, friend," they said, looking at the guard. "But if you bring us to whoever's in charge, we'll be out of your hair before you know it!"</p>
<p>That seemed to knock the man out of his stupor. "Um, right. I was going to lead you..." He turned and began walking at a brisk pace. Amar eagerly followed and, less certainly, Alita did too.</p>
<p>They passed a few more guards inside the hallways, but mostly they passed scientists of one kind or another. White coats, eyes buried in clipboards or tablets or in heated conversation with each other. Some of them pushed metal trays with dissected animals on them. As Amar approached, their eyes widened and they backed up out of the way, pressing themselves against the walls in a hurry. The atmosphere was tense; and everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing; <em>Amar is here and even if they'd never, they could kill all of us in the blink of an eye. Don't piss Amar off. Just stay out of the way and be small.</em></p>
<p>Eventually the guard leading them stopped by a mahogany door and knocked. "Someone to see you, sir!" There was a <em>click</em> from inside and, without prompting, Amar swept in and shut the door behind them.</p>
<p>Alita looked at the Biocord guard. He looked back at her. He shifted his weight nervously. "So... Worldguard, huh?"</p>
<p>"That would be, um, yep."</p>
<p>She rocked on her heels.</p>
<p>He coughed.</p>
<p>She couldn't make out the words, but Amar was talking to someone on the other side of the door.</p>
<p>"They just kind of... showed up," she said, gesturing to the door. "I was just supposed to take pictures."</p>
<p>"Cool, cool."</p>
<p>Someone else was talking inside the room. He sounded thoroughly dressed-down.</p>
<p>After a few more minutes, the door opened and Amar slinked out. Through the crack, Alita caught sight of an old bearded man, hair as white as snow and face white as a sheet. "Alright, let's get going!" Amar said cheerfully. "Could you show us the way out, friend?" they asked the guard.</p>
<p>"Um, uh, of course, Great Amar."</p>
<p>A few minutes and a few more terrified guards later, Alita was back outside with Amar. They were on all fours now, so she looked down at them. "So, uh, did you have a good conversation with that... whoever that was?"</p>
<p>They nodded. "Yep! Director Alwin, good man. Apparently they're some kind of... uh, I dunno. Genome... putting in order thing? No, <em>sequence,</em> that was the word. I don't know, sounds more like Alethea's thing." Their head drooped. "I mean, they're all going to stop, and I'm going to go get some of my friends to make sure of that, but, uh, I'm kinda bummed out. They were getting funding from the twins' church."</p>
<p>She blinked. "Like, the godly twins? Ketri and Esti the twins?"</p>
<p>Amar sighed and closed all three of their eyes. "Yep, them. It's just, gah!" They clenched three of four paws. "It's frustrating, ya know? I tried with the twins, I really did! I tried to show them how to be good to people, to nature, and that just because they <em>could</em> do stuff doesn't mean they <em>had</em> to. But apparently they've been going behind my back with this stuff, and they <em>know</em> how I feel about the environment. I just." They sighed. "I don't know what I did wrong. And I can't just, you know, <em>forget</em> this." Amar looked up at her. "I'm gonna have to yell at them. I hate yelling at people, and Ketri and Esti <em>really</em> hate being yelled at, and <em>ugh</em> this is going to be the <em>worst.</em>"</p>
<p>"I'm sorry to hear that," she said. "I hope it goes well."</p>
<p>"Ha! Yeah, me too. Um, speaking of being sorry, I think I should apologize too. You know, showing up on your mission and kind of." They gestured to the log structure. "Taking over like this."</p>
<p>"No!" she said hurriedly. "No, it's fine. It's been, uh, cool hanging out, Amar. And you <em>are</em> sort of my boss."</p>
<p>"Heh, guess I am! Anyway, we're done here, I think. You can call your moth buddy over here. Oh, right, you're probably not going to show back up with the pictures, huh? I'll get over and tell the folks over at the station about everything." They winked. "Not gonna leave you hanging. Take care, Alita!"</p>
<p>"You too, Amar."</p>
<p>They pointed a finger gun at her. "And hey, look me up next time you're in the north, got a whole bunch of holidays coming up and you do <em>not</em> want to miss the celebrations. See ya!"</p>
<p>
  <em>WHOOSH!</em>
</p>
<p>And in the blink of an eye, Amar was gone.</p>
<p>She looked behind her, then at the treeline. "Guess I just... leave." She slung her pack off and found the flare she was to use to signal Aonyx. It was a little plastic tube, bright pink, with a cap on one end. She pointed it straight up, carefully unscrewed it, and braced.</p>
<p><em>Pewwww!</em> A streak of light shot into the air, burning bright enough to block out even the sun as it soared higher and higher with a rising whistle. Higher, higher, and <em>pop!</em></p>
<p>And now to wait.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>... there! A little black speck in the distance. She waved to it as it grew larger and larger, resolving into Aonyx's big green body in a matter of minutes. Then she realized it wasn't slowing down for a landing, and backed up.</p>
<p>Aonyx came down like a meteor, kicking up dirt and looking back and forth frantically. Pink clouds of energy had gathered on the undersides of its wings. ((Partnered one! Where danger? Signal close to target! Danger!))</p>
<p>"Hey hey, shh, it's okay," she said, coming in closer and stroking its crown of fur. "It's, uh, it's a long story, but there's no danger."</p>
<p>((... no danger?)) they rumbled.</p>
<p>"Yeah, can we just get out of here?" Without further prompting Aonyx relaxed, dispelled its energy attack, and lowered itself so she could climb on. She did so promptly, and it rose up. "Alright, good to go!"</p>
<p>((Then this one leaves.)) Aonyx shot into the air. ((Back to great circle base.))</p>
<p>"Thanks! And man, Aonyx, you're not going to <em>believe</em> who I met out here..."</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <strong>"Even if it's hard or scary, don't you want to protect it?"</strong>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please do leave a comment, let me know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Obsession</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I do not own Mythic Ocean. Paralune does.</p><p>Chapter published April 11 2021.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>"I want them to go as far as they possibly can with science on their side."</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">Markev</span>
</p><p>"Computer," he said. "How long till we're there?"</p><p>A blue orb of light appeared in front of him, flashing brighter as it spoke. "ETA to Uncharted System... five hours."</p><p>"Thanks, computer. Dismissed." It blinked out. Markey turned away from where the computer's AI had projected itself, facing a glassy terminal on the walls. It reached from the floor to the ceiling, and the glass was so pure black he could see individual motes of dust clinging to its surface. "Kitchen," he said, focusing his intent on going there, to <em>that</em> place in his ship, rather than saying it aloud for no reason.</p><p>The world around him distorted as the ship's onboard teleporters found him and took hold of his body. Dark spots grew darker, bright spots grew brighter and bluer, and his field of view <em>receded</em> as though down a long tunnel as the black and blue grew like mold to engulf everything he could see...</p><p>... and then in reverse, twice as fast. The world stretched back into view, and the warped colors settled back into place. He was no longer in his bedroom, but in the kitchen of his ship.</p><p>The kitchen was a sizable room, and its circular perimeter was covered entirely in see-through shelves and cupboards. Inside the cupboards were a few listed ingredients, and Markev went a bit closer to each of them to see what they could be used for. As he did, holographic displays lit up in his field of view. They weren't on the glass, not in the air, but transmitted directly into the part of his mind that processed vision. The result was something between a hallucination, and only seeing something in his mind's eye.</p><p>He searched through the various cans, loaded with every synthfood his company could afford. Alfos's Human Spaghetti, DX-RTE's Vren Oil Substitute, EZ-Synthesize-Steak... whenever he found one, he mentally marked it as 'selected'.</p><p>Once he had enough for his crew, he said aloud, "Cook all selected."</p><p>The onboard kitchen computer quickly read his mind, found the selected group, and a second later...</p><p>
  <em>Ding!</em>
</p><p>That was that. The food would all have been teleported to the dining hall. Markev lowered his hand to the floor and raised it up. As he did, a holographic call window rose from the floor to face height. "Vrika," he said aloud, and the screen rippled to show the inside of Vrika Heavenkiller's room. The midarian - a large, bipedal avian covered in brilliant red plumage and with four eyes - was at her nest, pecking about on a private hologram. "Computer says we're there soon. Report to the dining hall."</p><p>Without even skipping a beat at his sudden appearance, she nodded. "Right away," she chirped out, before swiping a large, broad wing and cutting his transmission.</p><p>Markev went through the rest of his employees, summoning them one by one. A general message would've worked, but he wanted to get them personally.</p><p>"Eliz."</p><p>"S3-E3."</p><p>"Arlok."</p><p>"Vandor."</p><p>Then, eventually, his last stop. The room was colored hot pink, and there was a teenage girl sitting at an old style vanity, a ray-gun in her hands. She had curled demon-ram horns coming out the side of her head, and a pair of large bat wings out her back. Her hair was bright, neon yellow. Even as he watched, he pointed the ray-gun at one of the wings, where it was slowly recoloring them from dark red to black.</p><p>"Susan!" he barked, startling her. "Put the body-mods down and get to the dining hall. Company meeting."</p><p>She groaned, not turning to look at him. "<em>Yes,</em> dad. Body mods off." The demon horns and wings turned to ash, falling freely to the ground. The yellow in her hair drained out and her natural black flooded in to replace it.</p><p>"Don't sulk, Susan. We're almost there." He swiped the hologram back into the ground and said aloud, "Dining hall."</p><p>
  <em>Whoooorrrrrr...</em>
</p><p>Again, the world receded from view as he was teleported.</p><p>
  <em>Viirrrrrr...</em>
</p><p>And again, the world came back, but now he was elsewhere.</p><p>The company ship's dining hall was like a high-class restaurant atop a space elevator. It was located near the middle of the ship, out where it bulged outwards the most. As a result, the panoramic windows didn't show any of the ship's metal exterior when you looked out. Just the pure, empty, starless black of the intergalactic void. Not even Markev's own, top-of-the-line eyes could make out the faintest glimmer of a galaxy.</p><p>The dining hall's interior had no doors or elevators to the rest of the ship, bar a few panels that could be pulled back to reveal emergency exits in the event that the onboard teleporter failed. Strips of yellow light ran along the floor, standing out sharply against the dark brown flooring. Insta-Furn brand tables and chairs had erupted all around the area, each seat designed for the unique physiology of everyone on the ship, and the tables were packed with the food he'd picked and cooked.</p><p>One by one, people began warping in. Not just the people he'd called, but the people they'd went and gotten themselves. They popped in with teleportation; first there'd be nothing more than motes of blue light floating in midair, then more and more until it formed a solid silhouette, and then the light would fade and there they were. His daughter Susan, the squat robot S3-E3, aquatic aliens in pressurized suits, avian aliens, more humans, all manner of mortals from across the universe.</p><p>Markev didn't take a seat; instead, he walked to one end of the dining hall as everyone began filing in. Once he was satisfied everyone had arrived, he held out a hand as though he were gripping something. Sure enough, a crystal glass teleported between his fingers, and he tapped on it with a spoon that also materialized as needed.</p><p><em>Ding ding ding!</em> "Can I have everyone's attention please?" he asked, raising his voice. The growing hub-ub died down before it had a chance to blossom as everyone looked his way. "Thank you. I've brought you all here with some exciting news. According to the ship's computer, we'll be arriving at our system in just a few short hours!" The glass and spoon vanished, letting him clap his hands together. Behind him, a portion of the glass windows changed to a countdown, from just under five hours. "When we get there - "</p><p>"Keep track of all your daily events!" a woman's voice interrupted from behind him. He spun around in surprise, then frowned when he saw the countdown was frozen and, in its place, an ad was playing with cutesy pictures of children laying in grassy meadows. "Never forget those important, special moments, with the TruTime Countdown app."</p><p>The ad ended and the countdown resumed. "Ahem. Anyway. We'll all be arriving shortly. This is it, everyone. I know all Deep Dive employees have been working very hard to make this a reality, and this is the big score. Free matter, no oversight, and our own personal black hole."</p><p><em>Bring up congratulations list,</em> he thought. A list of various employees, their positions, and what they'd done to make this a reality flashed to the front of his mind's eye.</p><p>"I want to take this time to thank Sophoron Buon for charting our course," he said, and a spotlight fell onto one of those aquatic aliens, and she looked away bashfully at the attention. "Abuno Antor for pouring through the gravimetric data to find this little gem all the way out here. Alfonso LaGuerra for..."</p><p>He continued listing a few more names, moving the spotlight back and forth as the counter continued to tick behind them. "... and lastly I would like to extend a big welcome to all friends and family, here with us on the Deep Dive Friends and Family package. No corporate speak - I really do see all of you as my family," he said, extending his hands wide. His chest warmed, and almost perfectly, unbidden, a tear came to his eyes. "We're not exactly much of a company out here, after all. Not like we're selling anyone anything." There were a few chuckles. "Alright alright, I've rambled on long enough. Dig in, everyone."</p><p>Everyone cheered and began to eat, talking excitedly to one another. Markev, for his part, found where Susan had sat and pulled up a seat next to her. She wasn't eating her chocolate lava cake - her favorite - and was instead staring off into space, a blank look in her eyes.</p><p>"Susan," he said. "Get off the internet."</p><p>She groaned, but turned her attention back to the physical world. "Ugh, fine." Her whining cut off when she saw what was in front of her. "Mmm." She held up her hands, and both a knife and a fork teleported into them. She dug in like a pig.</p><p>Markev, for his part, enjoyed a simple soup. It was rich and salty, and the spiced pork in it was hot enough to clear his nostrils and burn his eyes. "So, are you going to be alright by yourself while we're getting settled?"</p><p>She groaned. "<em>Yes,</em> dad, I am. Alethea's sake, it's just a black hole."</p><p>He smiled at her attitude. Oh, to be that fiery again. "Alright, in that case I'm going to the bridge. Take care!"</p><p>"Whatever."</p><p>"Bridge," he said aloud after swallowing the last mouthful of his soup.</p><p>One teleport later, he was there.</p><p>The bridge was located at the very front of their ship, the tip of the spear as they dove towards their destination. Space was a vacuum, devoid of gravity, and so he could imagine orientation however he wanted. Markev liked to imagine they were sailing straight downward, falling onto the star system they'd chosen to live out their lives upon, and that when he looked up through the glass dome ceiling, he was really looking <em>down</em> at their target.</p><p>Of course, the artificial gravity keeping his shoes on the ground made the illusion pretty difficult.</p><p>Well, there wasn't much else to do. There were about four hours left until arrival, and there wasn't four hours of <em>work</em> to do.</p><p>Markev looked around. The bridge, when not in use, was pretty barren. He decided to start calling up holograms from the ground, orienting them to display all sorts of readings. A captain's chair appeared underneath him and he reclined into it, looking straight up into the inky darkness. Absolutely nothing to be seen.</p><p>He supposed he could catch up on his reading.</p>
<hr/><p>Their destination was an uncharted black hole system, floating deep in the intergalactic void. Based on its trajectory, it'd been ejected from a relatively nearby galaxy eons ago, probably during a close pass with another celestial body, and ever since it'd been drifting. Finding anything in the intergalactic void was virtually impossible, because there was simply so, so much space to look through, and not only that, but as the cosmos expanded, there was only an <em>increasing</em> amount of empty space to look through. But his company had specialized in finding the unfindable, in diving deep into the uncharted vacuum and returning with the coordinates to items of interest.</p><p>But this time, they wouldn't be returning to any of their customers, fellow companies seeking new sources of matter and energy to exploit. This time, they'd be staying.</p><p>Advanced nanotechnology could take any lump of matter and turn it into anything, even rearrange the subatomic particles to change one element to another like alchemy. But all that required energy, and in a world with vast roving Expansion Fleets and GigaCorporations rounding up every star and galaxy, sources of energy were worth more than their weight in unobtanium. And among the most valuable were black holes; the bigger the better. But there weren't many left that hadn't been claimed.</p><p>This little black hole system, utterly out of the way, untouched since the dawn of the first day when Alethea had created the universe, would sustain him, his family, and their loved ones forever. Or at least, close enough.</p><p>More people were on the bridge now; his captains, his astrophysicists, his engineers. The people who he'd built this company with, ruthlessly forcing out the competition and building something great. As the countdown grew closer to zero, Markev changed the way he pictured themselves; no longer were they a spear falling down towards their black hole, but now they were a rocket, soaring in sideways. To look up at the glass dome was to look out <em>ahead</em> at their final destination.</p><p>"Ten," he counted down. "Nine. Eight..." This was it. They were about to be here! "Three... two... and one."</p><p>The intergalactic drives cut out. There was no light out here, so the ship began releasing pings of radar and painted false color on the glass.</p><p>There it was. The black hole system.</p><p>Floating around in a tight orbit was its lone planet, a chunk of rock the size of a large moon, littered with craters and covered in wide canyons from where the black hole's immense tidal forces had tortured it. Just an ordinary, irradiated space rock, but to Markev it was so much more. They had journeyed so long, so far, to find this.</p><p>There was no accretion disk to spiral inwards to it, and there were no jets of x-ray light spewing from the poles. There were no stars behind it, so there wasn't any odd gravitational lensing. Just an invisible black ball, and the only way they could see it at all was the false ring of white the computer was projecting on the screen, like the outline of a circle.</p><p>Everyone who needed to breathe, held their breaths. They stared up at the simple scene. So simple, so mundane, but what it represented! No more contracts with uncaring giants. No more intrusive ads. Freedom from the ruthless exploitation, from having to ruthlessly exploit.</p><p>Then the scene shifted. Like a great giant awakening, something began to <em>appear</em> around the black hole, unraveling like a rolled up rug being let out. It was a great spherical structure, shedding its cloaking field, wrapped around the black hole. Markev's eyes widened as more and more of the construct came into view, and the excited silence gave way to nervous muttering.</p><p>It was like one of the Dyson Spheres erected around the stars of every galaxy, greedily pumping them for all the light they had. But this one had many open spaces in its surface, as if to let the black hole's non-existent light shine through. It was made of a dark, black metal, glinting blue when the ship's light hit it just so. The scale was immense, and even from so far away he could make out the details of glass domes the size of continents, coiling cables the size of asteroids, as well as several larger guns mounted along a rotating axis. It was enormous, far larger than the city-sized black hole it sat around; it was the size of a planet.</p><p>Someone had beaten them to it. But who?</p><p>Suddenly, the intercom crackled and they all jumped. "Hello out there?" came a woman's voice, deep and motherly. "Is this the... am I reading your ship ID right? The S.S. Darkness Dweller?"</p><p>Everyone was looking to him for leadership, and he would not let them down. Markev coughed, cleared his throat, and answered. "This is indeed the Darkness Dweller, property of the corporation Deep Dive. This is CEO Markev Interlo speaking. Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?"</p><p>"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Interlo. You may call me Alethea." His eyes widened. She seemed to sense his astonishment, because she laughed quietly on the other side. "Yes, the very same! Would you mind telling me your business in my little corner of the universe?"</p><p>"I..." What to do? Lie to her? Maybe. Nobody had seen Alethea in centuries, not since she'd struck off on her own. He'd been a young man back then, having just gotten his first anti-age slot, and the debt to go with it. What would she believe?</p><p>He stopped himself. Alethea wasn't the CEO of a GigaCorp, looking to pump him for all his money. She was the Creator, and former chair of the Intergalactic Scientific Committee. The truth would work.</p><p>"I... we came here because we thought this black hole was uninhabited. Our company specializes in locating star systems lost in the intergalactic void, and <em>this</em> one was supposed to be everyone's retirement plan."</p><p>"Well!" she said, and he could hear her mirthful smile through the intercoms. "I'm sorry to say, but I've rather beaten you to the punch." A pause. "Your ship is not in any critical condition, is it? Is your energy core stable, and all that?"</p><p>He frowned. "We... were carrying everything we needed to make a graviton turbine, but our ship itself runs off antimatter. If we drift we've got years left, but not enough to get out of the void."</p><p>"Ah ah!" she chided. "Not a problem. I certainly won't turn you away at the door, so please feel free to settle into orbit around that planet over there."</p><p>He nodded, then turned to Sophoron. "Make it so, captain," he whispered, and she nodded at him. He turned back to the ceiling, speaking 'to' Alethea as best he could. "We're charting a course right now."</p><p>"Splendid! Now, you must understand, I am a <em>very</em> busy woman, but I think I can set aside a few minutes to make your acquaintance, Mr. Interlo. I am locking on to your position right now, may I teleport you onboard so we may speak face to face?"</p><p>He took a deep breath. This... was getting out of hand rather quickly. Not only had they been beaten to their black hole, but by none other than Alethea herself. Her station was the size of a planet, who knew how much weaponry was stationed along it that he couldn't see from so far away? But what could he do? It'd be rude to turn down an interview. "Yes, whenever you are read - "</p><p>He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence before he was on her station. It wasn't even like regular teleportation; no warping of space, no sliding down a tunnel. He was just <em>there.</em> " - y!" he said, startling.</p><p>Markev was in... where <em>was</em> he?</p><p>At first he thought he was in a dome city, floating high in the clouds of a gas giant. It was certainly big enough; there was a skydome stretching unbelievably high up, projecting the appearance of being underneath the ocean waves to him. But there weren't any regular buildings. No closely-packed skyrises, no bustling hovercars, no humming smog-siphons to pump the choking fumes out into space. All around him were structures he could barely even guess the purpose of, in every kind of shape he could think of and some he never would have imagined. Some were simple canisters holding live specimens of fungi and plants, others were scale models of cities, others were gargantuan structures of spikes and curves, glass and metal and plastic and probably other types of material he had no name for. They stuck up from the ground, hovered in midair, even crawled along the edge of the dome like gravity was pointed upwards for them.</p><p>"There you are!" Alethea's voice greeted him, and it took him a moment to realize she was standing right in front of him.</p><p>Or, rather, floating.</p><p>He'd seen pictures of Alethea before. Who hadn't? But nothing quite did her justice. On the surface she looked like a voluptuous woman who'd indulged deeply in dark blue skin-mods, with a richly patterned head scarf adorned with a golden star. But the more he looked, the harder it was to tell where her clothes ended and where her body began, if there was any difference at all; she didn't even have any legs, rather her skirt floated an inch or two above the ground, supporting her body, and through a cut in it he could see the inside was patterned with brilliant stars and constellations. The most immediately eye-catching feature of Alethea were her goggles, which were flush against her face and filled up by her pupil-less blue eyes. As she appraised him, her eyes seemed to zip up and down across his form with motions that were, no doubt, much smaller behind them.</p><p>"I... greetings, Alethea?" he said nervously. He looked around again. "Where am I?"</p><p>"Oh, just a quiet part of my lab," she said. "A lot of my station is currently engaged in experiments, and I'd hate to have dropped you in there while they're ongoing. At any rate, it is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Interlo."</p><p>"And... you too, Alethea," he said. She looked portly at first glance, but that was just an illusion. She was eye level with him, even taller thanks to her hovering. "I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed to see someone beat us out here."</p><p>She smiled and chuckled. "Yes, I imagine you would! I know <em>I</em> would have been peeved to have come all this way and find the trip was for naught." She held up a hand to pause him before he could get a word in edgewise. "Now now! Like I said, I am not about to turn you away at the door. You merely wanted to build a graviton turbine around this black hole, yes?"</p><p>"Well, that and use the turbine to put down roots here, yes." His eyes widened with an idea. "There wouldn't happen to be room around the black hole for another turbine, would there be?"</p><p>Alethea shook her head. "No, no, I'm afraid not. Look down."</p><p>He did. The moment he did, the tiled floor turned transparent, allowing him to see through the floor of the station, all the way down to the black hole. Alethea's station wasn't just a shell around the vortex, but it also had enormous tethers, stretching thousands of miles down towards the event horizon.</p><p>"I've already set up my own turbine design all around the black hole, all the way down towards just above the event horizon. No room, I'm afraid. However, it is not a problem. They produce more than enough energy to power this station's basic functions, and there should be no problem transferring some of the surplus for your ship."</p><p>He blinked, and the floor turned solid again. "That is... rather generous of you, Alethea." But what was the catch? "What do you want in exchange?"</p><p>She drew back, as if offended. "In exchange? Goodness, do you think me so cold hearted as to simply doom you to drifting in space until you run out of power?" Her eyes narrowed behind her goggles, and she huffed. "Honestly now. I suppose if you want an <em>exchange</em> all I ask is you, and the people with you, refrain from entering my station unless I invite you. It has taken me a long time to build all the sensitive equipment in this laboratory, and I do not fancy having to run around picking up after people."</p><p>A moment's pause. Markev was tense. But then Alethea seemed to relax. She even gave a little giggle. "Hee hee. You know, in a way, this actually rather reminds me of how I met the Historian." The who? "He showed up outside my old station too, much like you." She rolled her eyes. "He knocked quite a lot of my things over. And I'm still rather certain Beaker CE-37-O ended up falling into the depths."</p><p>He needed to take back control of this conversation. "If all you want is no trespassing, then I can certainly agree to that!" Markev smiled. Maybe this wasn't so bad. They'd come here for a black hole's energy, and they'd get it after all. "If you're sure we won't be imposing?"</p><p>"Oh, not at all! This black hole of mine is only good for low-level processes any way. I need a lot more energy for some of my truly ground-breaking research."</p><p>"More energy?" Alethea <em>had</em> been called the goddess of discovery and innovation. But what possible source of power could she have found that had her referring to a black hole, completely milked to the bone, as only good for 'low-level processes'? "What in the <em>world</em> could you need that much power for?"</p><p>She smiled wryly. "Perhaps one day, I will tell you! After all, we are going to be neighbors for the foreseeable future. Now." She clapped her hands together. "Let me send you back to your ship. I'll coordinate with your captain, help set up the energy transfer process." She looked away into the distance for a second. "A dock of sorts, perhaps... yes. Any way, I will be seeing you!"</p><p>"See you - "</p><p>Suddenly, he was back on his own ship.</p><p>" - too?!" he said to his crew.</p>
<hr/><p>True to her word, Alethea helped them into orbit around the black hole's planet, then helped them pick a relatively safe landing spot on it. They landed and converted the ship into their shelter, hopefully one day a proper little town. To help them with power, Alethea's science station produced and launched a fleet of satellites into orbit around itself, transferring high-energy beams to their new home, enough to power a short-range terraforming procedure to make the planet safe to be on.</p><p>The little irradiated space rock would never be a lush paradise, but it didn't neither to be. After all, that was what VR was for. It was a bit frustrating, though. It was, after all, a whole planet's worth of mineral wealth, just sitting there and uselessly orbiting the black hole.</p><p>One day, Markev found himself sitting in his bed, at the very top floor of a high-rise superscraper. He stared up through the glass bubble dome of his roof, up into the sky. It was always black, everywhere, in the intergalactic void. No stars, no galaxies, no light. Even if there were, the planet had no atmosphere to color the sky.</p><p>Above him, Alethea's station floated, an everpresent icon in the sky. And staring up at it, it stirred thoughts in him.</p><p>He'd always had a passion for the sciences. Who didn't? But he'd been born too late, into a universe where the mortal races had become masters of reality. The laws of physics were charted, the vast galactic superclusters mapped. Too late to explore the universe, too late to delve into research.</p><p>Nothing to explore... but then, what was Alethea doing here with a research station the size of a small planet?</p><p>Well, what the hell. They were neighbors.</p><p>"Computer," he said, and its azure sphere appeared next to him. "Open intercom with Alethea."</p><p>"Affirmative."</p><p>
  <em>Click.</em>
</p><p>A moment's pause, and then Alethea's voice came through, as crystal clear as though she were standing right in front of him. "Hello there, Mr. Interlo! Is there anything I can do for you?"</p><p>"I just found myself curious," he said.</p><p>"Aha! I can certainly relate to <em>that.</em> What's on your mind, my friend?"</p><p>"Well, first it's this planet. It belongs to you, right? I was wondering if we can mine it out."</p><p>"Oh, of course you can! I haven't needed it for anything, but there's no point in letting it go to waste. Yes, by all means, do whatever you want. And I'm to assume there's something else you wanted to ask?"</p><p>"There is, actually. It's your station." He looked up at it again, awed by its sheer scope. "What... what in the <em>world</em> could you possibly be researching? How in the world are you powering it if a black hole's not enough?"</p><p>"Now that <em>is</em> a splendid question! Here, let me bring you on board."</p><p>"Wait, let me - "</p><p>And suddenly he was on Alethea's station. In his underwear.</p><p>The goddess floated before him. She narrowed her eyes at him, then snapped the fingers on one of her glove-like hands. "Ah, my apologies. Let me get that."</p><p>And just as suddenly, he was fully dressed.</p><p>His gut burned a bit, and he had to suppress to give the all-powerful deity a piece of his mind. "Right, thanks," he settled on. Then Markev looked around. "This... isn't where I first came aboard. Where are we?"</p><p>"This," Alethea said, gesturing to the room, "is my main generator."</p><p>"It looks unpowered," he said. The room was as absolutely gargantuan as the first one he'd seen, and it was riddled with wires and electronics boxes all over its surface. In the very middle was a podium of unobtanium, sculpted to have a bowl in its middle. It was all quiet. No humming, no lights. Was this her generator?</p><p>"Well, that would be because I am not using it at the moment!" she said. "This station is equipped with several remarkably high-capacity batteries. My own design, of course," she said, touching a hand to her chest. "However, I am ready to begin a new round of testing, so there's no harm in topping them off. Watch."</p><p>Alethea hovered over to the podium, then held an arm up in front of her. Her goggles began to <em>glow,</em> brighter and brighter until he could barely see her irises behind the glare. From her outstretched palm appeared something he'd only ever seen in sims; the gargantuan orange ball of power known as the Gift of Creation, the very thing that gave Alethea her dominion over the universe.</p><p>As though it were glued to her hand, Alethea lowered the Gift into the podium's hole. When the Gift of Creation made contact, the entire room flared to life. Wires began to glow, with blue auras flowing through their bodies. The podium's black substance turned brilliant white, like it was being heated to near melting, and the ground rumbled beneath his feet. Markev took a step back and shielded his eyes against the blazing lightshow, but before he knew it, it was over.</p><p>Alethea lifted the Gift out and reabsorbed it. The room darkened and quieted, and the godly aura surging from her faded. "<em>That</em> is how I power my facility's main functions."</p><p>"But what are you even studying?" he asked, gesturing around. "There haven't been any new physics to discover in... in <em>ages.</em>"</p><p>"Aha!" she said excitedly, eyes upturned happily. "But that's precisely it. What about the field of metaphysics? The physics of physics, the laws that govern what laws come into being. <em>That</em> is what I have been studying. Allow me to show you."</p><p>Markev braced himself and, sure enough, they were teleported again. He and Alethea appeared somewhere else again, into a room patterned with purple and blue hexagons and wide glass windows. Before his very eyes, a copy of one of the chairs in his office appeared. Hell, maybe it <em>was</em> the same one.</p><p>"Please, sit." He did so, and Alethea hovered lower to stay eye level with him. "Are you familiar with how I made this world?"</p><p><em>How I made this world.</em> What a sentence. "I think so," he said. "You used the Gift of Creation to create it from nothingness, right?"</p><p>"But what about <em>before</em> that nothingness?" she pushed.</p><p>He wracked his memory for his church lessons. "There was some sort of other world before that, right? An ocean?"</p><p>She nodded. "Indeed. One day, the Ocean was engulfed in a brilliant light, and all of the creatures I'd come to know vanished, as if they were never there to begin with. <em>That</em> was when I received the Gift, and <em>that</em> was when I brought this world into being." Alethea frowned and looked at the ground, worriedly. "But, there is something that worries me. That this world... it is not the first time it has happened. I have a friend. Another god, but you wouldn't know him. He keep watch on us from his own little pocket of reality, documenting the history of the mortal world. His presence makes me think that this process is cyclical."</p><p>He thought back to his first meeting with her. "You mentioned a historian before. Is that who you mean?" he asked, leaning forward. This was divine knowledge. Did anybody in the world know of this? He felt... he didn't know how he felt.</p><p>"The very same," Alethea confirmed. "If my suspicions are correct, then this is not the first time the Gift of Creation has been used to create the world, nor will it be the last. But for that to happen, what will become of this world?" She gestured around herself. "I have spent decades solving the problems of heat death. <em>Successfully,</em> I might add. That is not enough, however. So I use the Gift to conduct my studies into the very nature of our world, the very nature of this... this <em>cycle.</em>" Alethea sighed and sank lower.</p><p>She looked so... tired.</p><p>"I do not know how much time there may be left," she admitted, and Markev's heart skipped a beat.</p><p>"What? What do you mean, the world's going to end?" he whispered, breathless, like the goddess's words had punched him in the gut.</p><p>"It very well might. We... <em>you</em> mortals have all come so far. You've accomplished so much. But it may all end up swept away like so much dust to make room for the next world. And then the next, and the next. And what will become of us? Become of <em>me?</em> I do not know what gods may come after us, or if they will be able to solve this problem either."</p><p>"That's why you came out here," he said. Markev leaned back. "Goodness, that's... that's a lot to take in."</p><p>She giggled, raising a hand to her mouth. "Oh, I certainly bet it is!" Alethea shook her head. "Oh, listen to me, laying this sort of weight on you."</p><p>"No, no," he said, shaking his hands. "I'm glad you did. I asked for it, after all."</p><p>"Mmhmm, well, it certainly is good to meet another curious mind all the way out here! However, I am worried. Despite all my efforts, nothing has been made clearer. The end of the world, it might come at any moment. It might be today. Tomorrow. When the last black hole evaporates. It might happen this very instant." She deflated, resting her head in her hands. "I do not know the mechanism that would end the world, I do not know what might trigger it. I was not able to figure out the purpose of the Ocean, and I fear I may not be able to figure out the workings of the Cycle either. Not in time to save us."</p><p>Markev's heart ached. For Alethea to admit she might not be able to solve something, it must've been a truly staggering problem. "Well, I'm sure if anyone can, it's you," he said. "And if you need help, none of us have anything immediately pressing to do."</p><p>"Haha!" she laughed quietly. "Oh, thank you for the offer, but I'm afraid I must decline. I get my best work done on my own, after all." She looked up. "Well then. I trust this satisfies your curiosity? After all, it <em>is</em> quite a lot to absorb all at once," she said with a quirk of her lips.</p><p>He nodded. "It does. I... kind of wish I didn't know. It feels like a sword hanging over my head."</p><p>"It does indeed," she admitted. "But I, for one, will not give up on this. As long as you work hard, you can accomplish anything, and this research <em>must</em> be done." She rose up, and Markev stood to match her. "Please, let me send you back. After all, I do have a rather staggering workload to get to."</p><p>"Alright," he said. "I'll see you around."</p><p>"Indeed! Until next time, my friend!"</p><p>And then he was back home. He was even undressed again. He was even laying on his bed, staring straight up.</p><p>Alethea's words weighed on him like a ton of neutronium bricks. A great cycle of worlds, coming into being and ending for the next to begin. What a thing. But... that was good, right? It meant there was more to discover out there, more secrets to unearth, and he hadn't been born too late at all. Maybe he'd been born just in time, even.</p><p>He stared up through the glass dome. Alethea's station was still there, humming with a planet's worth of scientific equipment. All around them the skies were black.</p><p>Maybe one day they'd light up. A great blazing font of energy would engulf the universe, forcing back the darkness and turning all there was into light, undoing the work of generations in mere moments.</p><p>But that day was not today, and there was so much to do until then.</p><p>"Computer," he said aloud. "Draw up planetary demolition plans."</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>"Beyond that... we'll have to wait and see."</strong>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please do leave a comment, let me know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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